The Skill of 'Learning'

We have come a long way from educating for the three R's only - Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic! As an educational institution, our fundamental goal is to ensure the education of our learners is 'fit for purpose'. That we not only teach, model and facilitate practice of these discipline specific skills, but also seek to foster the skills, habits and mindsets of a learner - those capabilities and dispositions that will allow our learners to flourish in a world dominated by exponential technological advancements.

As the world is changing, so too must our approach to learning and curriculum. In February, some colleagues and I attended the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) 2025 conference. We were fortunate to hear from Australian and international leaders in education, whose keynote presentations affirmed that our approach to teaching and learning must include the teaching and fostering of these broader skills - and one skill in particular - the skill of 'learning' itself.

This can be a challenging concept for our learners. Learning how their brain receives and processes information, reflecting on their strengths as a learner and developing critical thinking and collaboration skills are just as important as learning how to read, write and do maths. The dominant view of most learners however is that school is really all about memorisation (and regurgitation!) of content. 

Here at DCC, we want our learners to recognise that school is so much more than that. We want them to understand how the brain actually learns, and indeed to use that knowledge to most effectively 'memorise' content. That said, we don't want them to memorise just to pass a test, but rather to see how consistent retrieval of information over an extended period helps to embed knowledge in their long-term memory. And then, how they can use that information to generate new learning and transfer their skills across multiple disciplines.

Consistently trying to retrieve information from their brains over a period of time can be hard, time-consuming and frustrating for our learners. This is why cramming for a test or SAC to the point of 'familiarity' is still the dominant way of studying for most of them.

Learning CAN be challenging, but our hope as educators is that our learners can appreciate that it is in the struggle where learning happens, that it is when they need to work hard to remember something that learning gets embedded, and that it is better to learn things deeply rather than just superficially to pass a test. This is an important aspect of the skill of 'learning'.

In our Year 10 Jumpstart Learning program, I tell our learners the following:

We learn because we were born to learn. We were born to be curious, to be inquisitive, to question, to wonder, to explore, to understand, to reflect, to try, to fail, and to try again.

We learn because we were created to learn. God has created us with this amazing brain that has been designed to help us understand the world around us, and to respond creatively and empathetically to the needs of that world.

Our hope as Christian educators is that our learners recognise and embrace the potential of the amazing brain God has given them, and continue to ask questions, wonder, be curious and explore all the ways they can imaginatively and compassionately respond to the needs of the world around them.