Our Learning Culture

Our Learning Principles and Learning Definitions provide us with a common Learning Culture imbued with the Avenor values. All of us at Avenor: students, parents, professionals and partners, commit to working within this Culture, while still enjoying wide scope for our personal creativity. Our common learning language is shared with the other member schools of the Common Ground Collaborative (CGC), of which Avenor is an active member.

At Avenor, we are committed to a common Learning Culture framed by our Learning Principles:

We can all learn how to learn and have a right to do so

Learning is personal and a social activity

Learning is both cognitive and emotional

Learning transfer happens best in rich, relevant contexts

To create learning cultures we need a common learning language

We set out to support our students in becoming experts in three well-defined forms of learning: Conceptual, Competency and Character.

Conceptual learning.

This is happening when students are: connecting new, potentially disruptive, knowledge to prior understanding and to important concepts; constructing and re-constructing theories of how things work and why things are the way they are; testing their evolving theories in different contexts to refine them so they have increased explanatory power and to see when, where and how they apply.

Competency learning

This is happening when students are: deconstructing expert performance and comparing it with their own; identifying the adjustments they need to make; practicing a skill in order to refine it and make it increasingly automatic.

Character learning

This is happening when students are: considering what particular dispositions and values would ‘look like’ when applied in specific authentic contexts; acting as a result of these considerations; reflecting on the effects of these actions.