St Joseph’s School Stanthorpe is a community that has developed its culture around learning in recent years.  As a TCS Lighthouse School as well as a Visible Learning+ Certified School since May 2021, we better understand the significant potential for our learners when teachers have clarity around the curriculum, are evaluating their own impact and when they are supported to deepen their professional practice where they have agency. Similar empowerment has also been evident in our student learners who are now more able to articulate and act on what it means to be an effective learner than they were a few years ago. They are also becoming more able to take responsibility for, and direct, their own learning, regardless of whether they are early in their school life or closer to completing it. 

The consistent focus on a common language around learning and the implementation of high-impact teaching and learning strategies has assisted us to develop this culture. However, the ability to continue to grow as a learning community has been uppermost in our minds during this term.  Through the analysis of multiple forms of evidence, staff have been involved in conversations around the extent of our growth over the past 12 months and this has led us to redefine our aspirational goals for teachers, students and parents for the future. 

The introduction of Subject Discipline Literacies (SDL) in 2023 as an initiative for all secondary schools, sits firmly under the umbrella of Visible Learning at our school.  With the focus of SDL on clarity of curriculum expectations around literacies, the explicit teaching of skills that can be transferred and using data to identify, meet the needs of and evaluate the growth of the learners, the connections to Visible Learning are clear.  The first group of secondary teachers will begin their training in a few weeks, although all secondary staff have already had the opportunity to explore the rationale behind the 3L program, to review their particular subject areas through this lens and to consider the impact on learners when these skills have been developed. 

The overall professional learning plan for all teachers at St Joseph’s in 2023 will again be founded on Professor John Hattie’s Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning, with each teacher choosing one of the mindframes on which to focus. This is a choice made by them after considering their own needs as a learner as well as the needs of the student learners with whom they work.  Resources have been curated on Canvas and One Note platforms to support teachers’ learning in these areas. Whilst all teachers will be involved in impact cycles, those teachers who have been trained in SDL will have to opportunity to link their learning with their chosen mindframe and build that into an ongoing impact cycle to evaluate their impact on student learning.  They will continue to have the support of myself on this journey as AP Teaching and Learning as well as a SDL tutor, but will also benefit from their mindframe PLT colleagues who all have the role of coaches.  Learning at St Joseph’s is a collective responsibility, whether you are a teacher or a student and something in which we are all invested.