Learning and Teaching

Jane Goddard

Assistant to the Principal - Learning and Teaching

Visible Learning at Marian College

Last year, we concluded our formal participation in the Visible Learning Plus Project that we had been involved in for the past 3 years, supported by Catholic Education Melbourne.

Evidence gathered has illustrated the positive impact that has been achieved over this period. Led by our Learning Leaders, we are now focused on continuing to consolidate the use of high impact, visible learning strategies into our practice. Some of the key strategies being employed in 2020 are:

• Maintaining an alignment between school, learning team and individual teacher goals
• Supporting strong professional learning teams that plan collaboratively, focusing on student learning outcomes
• Facilitating professional learning workshops for colleagues, on a regular basis
• Using data effectively to know where our students are placed in their learning to target teaching and monitor progress
• Implementing a range of strategies to support/extend students with particular literacy and numeracy needs
• Embracing a whole-school approach to promoting and supporting reading
• Continuing to focus on teacher clarity, guided by the Marian Learning Framework
• Sharing our language and expectations for learning, displayed through our Love of Learning Poster
• Continuing to embed a culture of quality feedback that includes teacher to student, student to student, student to teacher and teacher to teacher feedback
• Carrying out learning walkthroughs (visits to teacher classrooms), focusing on important aspects of pedagogy

The learning walkthroughs are one of many sources of evidence that we have used to evaluate our progress. Evidence of success has also been collected through a range of other means including student assessment data and work samples, teacher surveys, video diaries and visits by external observers from Catholic Education Melbourne. 

We are now in a position to continue to embed the strategies listed and to track longitudinal progress over time. This should enable us to continually evaluate our impact and modify our instructional approaches to improve pedagogy and, most importantly, increase student-learning progress.