Catholic educators invite students to make sense of their world and their lives within a faith community that is faithful to the mission of Jesus (Horizons of Hope: Context, Catholic Education Melbourne 2016).

Religious Education is provided from Year 7 to Year 12, where the questions and inquiry of the students forms the basis of learning and teaching:

• opening up a more explicit dialogue between Catholic faith and the diverse cultures and lives of students
• finding new ways to express the Gospel as alive and authentic
• engaging in rich and meaningful experiences of prayer.

A pedagogy of encounter

Operating within a pedagogy of encounter, the Religious Education program places students’ lives and questions at the centre of the learning, with dialogue as both the process and the valued outcome. In authentic dialogue, learners are taken into new understandings; they are ‘transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were’ (Gadamer 1989, p. 379).

Supporting the full flourishing of learners

Religious Education at Our Lady of Sion operates within a framework that supports the full flourishing of all learners. It proposes a learning structure comprised of three strands of learning:

• Knowledge and Understanding, i.e. seeking truth
• Reasoning and Responding, i.e. making meaning
• Personal and Communal Engagement, i.e. living story.

Within these three strands, five content areas work together to build a network of understanding of the Catholic Church and its traditions and have their origins in the To Know, Worship and Love student texts.