“As a Jesuit school, we do what we say” – Teaching and Learning in Context: Blog #3

Our Director of Campus, Adam Lewis, has challenged the entire school to have the courage to do what we say; to act in a way that is faithful to the ethos of our school, our tradition, our story. The story of a school, and the people who inhabit it, is something that speaks to my heart. The Xavier story is one that combines 450 years of history with each of our own individual contexts. Each boy’s story at Xavier contributes to the broader story of who we are and who we want to be as we move forward with courage and conviction in our times. I find the story of a place, a person, even an ideology, to be revealing and insightful. Uncovering and understanding the story of each individual boy says much about how we look to form them as ‘whole and gentle men for others’.

As a school, what we teach and how we teach it informs the world of who we are and what it means to be a student in a Jesuit school. Does our curriculum reflect that we do what we say? Are we cultivating a culture of learning that references the four pillars of Ignatian Spirituality, forming people of conscience, competence, compassion and commitment? How do we do this when we also have compliance around reporting, course documentation and standardised testing? This tension forces us to identify ways in which we can still send the message that as a Jesuit school, we do what we say. Interestingly, leading school systems that rank highest in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) league tables such as Shanghai, Finland and Singapore are moving away from standardized testing to make greater use of teacher judgment. On a much smaller scale this is comparable to our own College’s push away from summative assessment towards formative assessment, in order to gauge authentic student learning and to provide meaningful feedback about individual progress. PISA itself acknowledges that the conversation around testing needs to be more nuanced, especially if education is to become more relevant and meaningful to the lives our students will ultimately lead.

Standardized testing has become part of the broader societal discourse around not only what we teach or how we teach it, but also why. If something is worth knowing, does that mean it should be examinable? If so, how do we determine what is worth knowing and can (or should) that knowledge be tested?  Perhaps these mandated tests enable us to truly explore the tension that exists between doing what we have to do and doing what we say.


In this blog series entitled «Conversations in Context: Teaching and Learning in a Jesuit School» or in short «Teaching and Learning in Context» we present articles written by Melinda Roberts. These originally appeared in Xavier College’s fortnightly newsletter, written for the school community and published on the school website. We are happy to share these with the wider Jesuit education community. To read the previous blog click here. 


Melinda Roberts, Xavier College’s Head of Teaching and Learning.

Melinda Roberts is the Head of Teaching & Learning at Xavier College in Melbourne, an all-boys Jesuit high school in Australia. In the last twelve months, she has led a number of significant changes at a physical, philosophical and ultimately cultural level, with the aim of ensuring Xavier remains committed to its mission of excellence in education and the formation of reflective, compassionate and articulate men and women of Christian faith, hope and love who will provide outstanding service and leadership in our world, while still producing excellent academic results. Her articles in this blog series provide an insight into this challenge, one which is invariably shared by Jesuit schools across the globe.