From spiritual capital to vocational capital: extending Gerald Grace's construct in Catholic secondary schools

Catholic secondary schools depend heavily on experienced teachers to sustain institutional memory, transmit mission, and maintain the school's educational commitments in daily practice. Yet existing scholarship lacks a precise conceptual framework for naming and analysing the localised professional influence that accrues to teachers who understand their work as a vocation. This article proposes ‘vocational capital’ as a distinct form of school-based social capital: the socially recognised, practically deployable resource accumulated by teachers who understand teaching as a vocation. Drawing on a qualitative study of veteran teachers in a large urban Catholic secondary school, the study uses semi-structured interviews to examine whether preliminary qualitative evidence supports the articulation of vocational capital as a distinct theoretical construct across three interrelated domains: resource accumulation, social recognition, and practical deployment. The article posits that vocational capital complements Gerald Grace's concept of spiritual capital by providing an observable framework that extends beyond the spiritual dimension of vocation.