Learning
Learning at Clarendon
At Clarendon, we are a community of learners. We aim therefore to expose our students to a range of different contexts for learning both in and out of the classroom, where they are challenged to apply and then grow their current level of understanding.
Ballarat Clarendon College is driven by a simple premise: every child can learn. Those four words underpin every decision we make; they reflect our values and they shape our culture.
Students – their growth and achievement – are our work. Their wellbeing is best supported by focusing on progress in everything they do, from the curriculum to living a healthy lifestyle to serving our community. We believe that students can only make optimum progress in an environment in which they are encouraged and supported by those around them.
Our core values – learning, effort, responsibility, community and wellbeing – define the behaviours and attitudes by which we hold ourselves and each other to account. Everything we do at Clarendon is in the service of student learning and progress. We believe that learning is incremental and all within our community must embrace possibilities and challenges in order to progress; that effort is non-negotiable; and that with persistence comes success.
At Ballarat Clarendon College, students and staff never stop working on getting better.
Clarendon positions itself at the forefront of applying the lessons of educational research and cognitive science to practical classroom applications. Increasingly, cognitive scientists have become aware of the importance of knowledge held in long-term memory for success in tasks as diverse as reading comprehension and critical and creative thinking. Unlike inert knowledge that is on the internet, knowledge held in long-term memory is active and can be flexibly and effortlessly applied to a range of situations. Knowledge is what you think with. In considering the implications of this for the school, Clarendon has committed to a knowledge-rich curriculum in which foundational, enabling and problem-solving knowledge is strategically developed as students pass through each stage of their education.