Student Mentoring

The need for young people to be well equipped to orient a rapidly changing world has never been more important. The GBPL program focuses on building student self-efficacy, self-determination and self-regulation through a personal best goal-based approach to learning. It aims to increase student engagement and achievement.

The program targets students transitioning from primary to secondary school, and supports them in managing this transition, laying a foundation to support HSC attainment. It also assists teachers to better know their students and how they learn, and to plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.

Our program is built around the concept of Growth Mindset and engenders a positive, solutions focused approach to learning, growth and development. Adopting a Growth Mindset builds student agency and commitment to learning. It moves the emphasis for learning from perceptions of individual student ability to the consistent and persistent application of learning processes, strategies and tools. Growth Mindset is enhanced by establishing a purpose for learning; identifying effective processes for learning; and demonstrating reflective practice to promote learning, growth and development. It also assists in making learning more visible, objective and procedural.

GBPL also promotes metacognition and reflective practice through monitoring progress towards the attainment of personal best learning goals. Personal best goals focus on individual student learning, growth and development, rather than comparative assessment of learning against a cohort. Personal best learning goals create a framework for engagement through building student self-efficacy, self-determination and self-regulation.

The development of personal best learning goals with students is enhanced through adopting a coaching framework, which promotes strategic thinking, process planning and reflective practice. Initially, the coaching process is modelled by the teacher with the learner; however, through practice over time, the learner can internalise the process to self-coach. At this point, the learner is able to demonstrate the agency required to become more self-directed and self-regulating, which further builds self-efficacy, resulting in improved wellbeing, motivation, engagement and performance.

Students can also coach each other to attain personal best goals, which contributes to developing a vibrant culture of learning and achievement.

The Burraga Foundation have developed the GBPL program in consultation with Aboriginal communities, families and schools to deliver a tool that provides all students with an opportunity to engage through a goal based personalised learning approach.

Most importantly GBPL enables an individual to be at the centre of their unique education, training and employment pathway as they learn, grow and move through their stages of development into their chosen academic or career path.