Can I install Catalina as a secondary OS?

I was going to update my Macbook Pro from Mojave to Cataline, only that the rating of Catalina is 2.7 out of 5 stars on App Store, and if 1 is the lowest, so 2.7 means (2.7 - 1) * 100 / (5.0 - 1.0) meaning it is 42.5 point out of 100.

So can I use another Macbook Air that had two partitions and dual boot of Mavericks and Sierra or High Sierra and upgrade perhaps the Mavericks to Catalina?

I need the Catalina so that I can run XCode, as XCode won't start unless it is Catalina.

Yes, you can boot to any number of OS versions that support your hardware, on different disks or partitions.

Bear in mind that High Sierra and later use APFS disk filing system, which Sierra can't read. So you can't put a Sierra volume on an APFS partition/container.