Teaching & Learning

At St Joseph's, we provide a holistic education that nurtures all student so that they flourish as learners. The Seeds of Growth provides a framework for teaching and learning to ensure that students develop the lifelong skills necessary to thrive in an ever-changing world.

Seed of Learning

Students learn to generate and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, seek possibilities, consider alternatives and solve problems. Students thinking broadly and deeply using skills, behaviours and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school.

Thinking that is productive, purposeful and intentional is at the centre of effective learning. By applying a sequence of thinking skills, students develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the processes they can use whenever they encounter problems, unfamiliar information and new ideas. In addition, the progressive development of knowledge about thinking and the practice of using thinking strategies can increase students’ motivation for, and management of, their own learning. They become more confident and autonomous problem-solvers and thinkers.

Dispositions such as inquisitiveness, reasonableness, intellectual flexibility, open- and fair-mindedness, a readiness to try new ways of doing things and consider alternatives, and persistence are developed.

Seed of Being

Students learn to be creative and confident individuals who, have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing, with a sense of hope and ‘optimism about their lives and the future’. Students develop skills in a range of practices including recognising and regulating emotions, developing empathy for others and understanding relationships, and developing leadership skills.

Seed of Collaborating

Students learn to understand themselves and others, manage their relationships, lives, and learning more effectively. They develop skills in establishing and building positive relationships, making responsible decisions, working effectively in teams, handling and challenging situations constructively.

Seed of Creating

Students learn to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, see existing situations in a new way, identify alternative explanations, and see or make new links that generate a positive outcome. This includes combining parts to form something original, sifting and refining ideas to discover possibilities, constructing theories and objects, and acting on intuition. The products of creative endeavour can involve complex representations and images, investigations and performances or digital and computer-generated output.

Responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century – with its complex environmental, social and economic pressures – requires young people to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use creative thinking purposefully.

Learning Support

The Learning Support program at St Joseph’s School is a support network for students, teachers and parents.  Students who require support with their learning are provided with a learning environment that gives them the most effective means by which to develop their learning potential.  The Learning Support Team’s role is both supportive and advisory, working with classroom teachers and outside agencies to develop and implement inclusive programs for all students.