‘The limits of my language means the limits of my world’: an examination of the Post Critical Belief Scale survey instrument, for pupils with English as an additional language

Abstract For the past 18 years the Enhancing Catholic Identity Project has dominated discussion about and within Catholic schools in Victoria, Australia. A research initiative begun in 2006 by the Catholic Education Commission, Victoria, and the Centre for Academic Teacher Training of the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, the project aims to measure the Catholic Identity of Catholic Schools in the state. Measurement is undertaken using a series of online questionnaires, with the results being presented in an extensive report to schools. While the project has largely been adopted uncritically, some of those administering the survey note that the statements in the survey instruments are complex and difficult to understand, particularly by students for whom English is not their first language. Attempts to provide translations of the statements into other languages is time consuming, costly and not terribly effective. This paper reports on a multi-faceted examination of the statements used in one of the measures, the Post Critical Belief Scale. It begins by outlining the project and the survey instrument of interest before moving to the findings of three analytical processes. In concluding, the paper finds that the individual statements used in the Post Critical Belief survey are well beyond the capacity of many of the students who are expected to take it.