Teaching and Learning

The Elements of Learning: Mastery and Application

Supporting Every Student to Thrive

In this edition, I’ll focus on how we are supporting our students to retrieve information from long term memory to apply it to make decisions and solve problems within the real world context.

Building Mastery and Applying Learning at SEPS

In our last newsletter, we explored the importance of practice and retention in helping students store information in their long-term memory. This time, we turn to what happens next — how students use that stored knowledge to build mastery and apply their learning in new ways.

Research from the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) shows that mastery develops when students consolidate their learning over time through spaced and varied practice. When knowledge is revisited, reviewed and used in different contexts, it becomes organised in the brain as strong “mental models” — networks of connected ideas that allow students to think flexibly, problem-solve and transfer their understanding to new situations.

At SEPS, this means you’ll often see our teachers:

• revisiting key knowledge regularly through retrieval practice and review sessions
• providing opportunities for students to apply what they know in different subjects or scenarios
• supporting students to explain their thinking, create visual representations and connect ideas across topics
• gradually increasing the complexity of tasks so that students can demonstrate deeper understanding over time.

When students can retrieve and apply what they know, they become more confident, independent learners. Each successful experience strengthens their belief that they can learn and succeed — building both self-efficacy and motivation. These skills are at the heart of our teaching approach and help prepare our students not just for school, but for lifelong learning.

To assist your decision making in relation to your child's education for 2026 and beyond, please find below a link to the November 2025 edition of the Secondary Education Guide.

CLICK HERE:https://victoriaschoolguides.starcommunity.com.au/secondary-education-november/