Lighthouse Schools Lead the Way: 

At the beginning of 2018, 25 schools in the Toowoomba Diocese commenced a three-year action research project that has become known as the Lighthouse School Project. Originally based on the success of the London Challenge project, the Toowoomba Lighthouse schools aim to become showcases of exemplary practice, provide support and expertise and share outstanding practice across six domains; Visible Learning, Numeracy, STEM, eLearning, Digital Tools and Wellbeing. 

Through the action research process, the lighthouse schools will measure evidence including growth in academic achievement and other positive impacts brought about by collective teacher efficacy and commitment to professional learning in these domains. At the end of the three-year period the schools will publish the results of the Lighthouse Schools project focussing on impact of the teaching strategies employed and the resulting academic achievement. 

The Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office, has made provision of focussed support through Education Officers in specific areas including support with effective use of data and support for teaching and learning through collaborative planning sessions, professional coaching as well as additional funding for resources. 

Even at the halfway mark of the project it is having a positive impact. The sharing of outstanding practice has provided inspiration for school leaders and motivated expert classroom teachers to become key stakeholders in the Lighthouse project. Professional learning has increased and schools are working together to develop and share best practice. From next semester a number of Lighthouse schools will conduct open door days where teachers from within the system are invited to observe innovative teaching & learning in practice and a Showcase of Learning Day to engage and heighten parent interest. 

The key elements and actions of the Lighthouse Project include: 

• Collective efficacy
• Co-constructed success criteria 
• Engaging families 
• Professional learning 
• Emphasis on students and their learning
• All teachers participate in the process 
• A repository of data and learning

Our Lady of Lourdes School in Toowoomba is a Lighthouse Numeracy School. At a recent Leadership Forum presentation, Miranda Murray, Middle Leader of OLOL provided a summary of our school’s focus for the project. “We are trialling a number of the Effective Practices of Numeracy that involve the three domains of the Numeracy Lighthouse project; Mathematical Mindsets, Curriculum Concepts and Pedagogical Practices. Staff will endeavour to inspire mathematical mindsets by modelling growth mindsets, referencing the learning challenge pit and fostering the belief that mistakes help the learning process. Everyone has a maths brain! 

Curriculum concepts encompasses the research of Jo Boaler’s Big Ideas: Visualise, Explore and Investigate. These big ideas will be explored in teacher planning and learning sequences. Number Talks will be encouraged each week ensuring we value dialogical learning in Mathematics (including open ended questioning and giving opportunity for students to talk about their understandings and share ways they each solve problems) Mathematical Word Walls will be evident in classrooms, incorporating the evident impact that Literacy has on Mathematical conceptual understanding. Learners may engage with Learning Journals to make their thinking and learning visible and to document the learning journey.  

We aim to develop assessment capable learners by engaging in pedagogical practices that enable students to form their own learning goals from the learning intentions and success criteria and from their own understanding of the concepts they have not yet grasped. “Classrooms are filled with curious learners who are engaged with open ended tasks, collaborative investigations and where there is surface, deep and transfer learning.” 

Proving Queensland is not just all sunshine and winning State of Origin games…we’re getting pretty cluey up here! Remember… Queensland, it’s beautiful one day…really smart the next.