The Learning Project at St Mary’s

Continuous improvement and ongoing professional learning are imperatives for teachers and schools. In a Benedictine community, this is a value central to our understanding of ourselves as growing in wisdom and faithfulness to God’s will for us. Learning at St Mary Star of the Sea College is led by teachers committed to their own learning and the academic status of their profession.

The College budget has always contained a line item for professional development. Over the past five years, this items has been allocated a significant amount of money. The money has been spent in a wide variety of ways including onsite and offsite training, training resources and teacher relief for training. It has also been used to cover the cost of consultants who have assisted in the delivery of onsite professional development.

It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of this approach to professional development. While individual teachers have certainly grown in their capacity to deliver curriculum and improve learning for students, we can not point to a wholesale change in learning culture or a measurable growth in the wisdom of the organisation.

The strategic plan for St Mary Star of the Sea College appreciates and responds to the need for professional development to be deeply embedded in the work of a teacher.

In Priority Area 2, the goal and strategy reads:

The College has been a member of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools – a cross-sectoral cooperative formed under the auspices of Sydney University for the purposes of sharing the methods and products of teacher practitioner research and school based learning projects. It has been our relationship with this coalition, and the influence of evidence based practice, that has shaped our response to a growing need for a cohesive professional learning paradigm at St Mary Star of the Sea College.