Capabilities

Learning and Life

One of our school’s Business Plan priorities is Capable Learners – ensuring that we not only support excellent academic outcomes for our students, but that we also support development of skills, attributes and dispositions – which we refer to as ‘Capabilities for Learning and Life’. Our Capabilities framework has been developed upon an extensive body of local, national and international research. Learner Agency is one of these Capabilities – and the ‘Empowering Learner Agency through Self-Development Cycles’ process intends to support student development through Learner Agency, across one or more of these Capabilities, on a cyclical basis.

As a student at Rossmoyne Senior High School, your child will be supported to reflect on and develop their own capabilities as part of a development cycle within the Homeroom program. The cycle begins with WHY – the importance of improvement and development as a lifelong learner. It moves to WHAT – an opportunity to think and reflect about things that are going well and things in which the student wants to improve, or things that current evidence and feedback suggest they should work towards improving. HOW is the biggest aspect of the cycle – the actual goal and the actions towards it. The cycle concludes with WHEN – a reflection on progress and development made, and a look forward to future development.

Learner Agency & School Reports

The reflection on progress, written by your child, will appear in your child’s end of semester report. We trust that you understand that it takes time to develop mastery of a cycle of self-development, and with each semester that passes while your child is a student at Rossmoyne Senior High School, the process of empowering their agency will not only set them up for a series of successes at school, but with the skills and attributes required to be life-long learners.

In communicating about this process, we have provided the following questions as a simple yet possibly useful framework for a conversation with your child:

• What did you set out to achieve? Why did you choose that goal or that Capability to focus on?
• You have written a reflection about the process – tell me more about it. How did you decide upon which strategies or actions to take? What went well? What didn’t go so well, and how can you learn from that?
• Which Capability are you thinking about focussing on in the next cycle? Will you build on your current direction, or change focus? Why?
• How can I help you from home to support your development in relation to Capabilities?

Your child will find out more about this process as they begin and continue their learning journey through our school.