Teaching & Learning

"Inspire learning and build our better world."

Welcome to Teaching and Learning at the American International School of Johannesburg (AISJ), where we are committed to providing a high-quality international education that nurtures both academic achievement and dispositional growth.

Our curriculum is framed around global standards and benchmarks, ensuring students develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for success in school and beyond. Engaging and challenging units of study are continuously updated to meet the diverse needs of all learners.

At AISJ, teachers translate the written curriculum into a rigorous, inquiry-based roadmap, using differentiation strategies to support individual learning needs. Our approach ensures that every student can thrive, whether in the classroom, on the sports field, or in creative and artistic pursuits.

On this website, you can explore AISJ’s teaching and learning philosophy, including our definition of learning, learning principles, assessment strategies, and our comprehensive curriculum of academic and dispositional competencies.

Dr. Roz Whaley
Director of Teaching and Learning

Designed for Deep Understanding

A Concept-Driven Curriculum
At AISJ, we design learning to go beyond isolated facts or rote skills. Our curriculum emphasizes the power of concepts and essential questions to enable the "transfer" of learning. This means we help students develop conceptual frameworks that support understanding across subjects, grade levels, and real-world contexts.

World-Class Standards
To ensure this conceptual understanding is rigorous and vertically aligned, our curriculum is grounded in North American standards that clearly define the knowledge and skills students must master at each grade level. These standards provide the consistent foundation from which we design meaningful learning experiences

Our academic competencies are derived from the following adopted standards:

• Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematics and English Language Arts
• Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
• College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies
• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiencies
• National Core Arts Standards
• International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards
• Shape America Standards for Physical Education and Health

The Portrait of an AISJ Learner
Beyond academic rigor, we believe learning encompasses the development of the whole person. We actively cultivate "Dispositional Competencies"—transferable skills and character traits that enable students to work effectively with others and adapt to various contexts.

Our students strive to be:

• Contributor: Communicating and advocating with intention and sensitivity.
• Mindful: Engaging ethically, thoughtfully, and with empathy.
• Curious: Asking questions, experimenting, and directing their own learning.
• Resilient: Approaching opportunities flexibly and persevering to achieve goals.
• Globally-Connected: Navigating similarities and differences responsibly and respectfully.
• Thinker: Reflecting and responding with diverse and divergent thinking.

Our Learning Principles
To achieve these goals, our teachers design experiences based on six core Learning Principles. Learning happens best when students experience:

• Challenge: Ambitious expectations and personalized goals.
• Relationship: Positive connections that ensure safety and belonging.
• Process: Inquiry, deep thinking, feedback, and reflection.
• Engagement: Active collaboration and diverse viewpoints.
• Relevance: Purpose and authentic connections.
• Ownership: Self-direction and pursuit of individual passions.

Measuring What Matters

Our assessment system is designed to communicate clear, meaningful information about a student's strengths and areas for growth. We use a competency-based model that aligns with the best practices of modern education.

What We Grade: Academic Competencies
We assess "Academic Competencies" - the broad, foundational skills essential for expertise in a discipline (e.g., "Calculating" in Math or "Writing" in Language Arts). These competencies remain consistent across all grade levels, providing a coherent learning progression throughout the school.

How We Grade: Proficiency Descriptors
We do not use a traditional A-F scale or simple percentage averages. Instead, we use a four-point scale designed to show student progress toward the standards.

• Elementary & Middle School: We use descriptive terms: Exemplary, Proficient, Approaching, or Beginning.
• High School: We use a 1–7 numeric scale to align with the International Baccalaureate (IB) grading scale.

Understanding Our Scale

Parents can use this guide to understand our proficiency levels:

Why We Don't Use a Traditional GPA
Parents often ask why AISJ does not utilize a traditional Grade Point Average (GPA) on report cards.

Growth Over Averages: A traditional GPA averages a student's performance over time, which penalizes students for not knowing something at the beginning of a unit. At AISJ, teachers provide a "best-fit summative grade" at the end of the semester. If a student starts a unit struggling but ends the unit with mastery, their grade reflects that mastery, not the early struggle.

Specificity: A single letter grade (e.g., "B in English") hides details. Our system reports on specific competencies separately, allowing families to clearly see strengths and growth areas in specific skill areas.

University Alignment: For High School students, we do derive an overall subject grade for university transcript purposes. However, our internal focus remains on specific competency feedback to drive learning.

Assessing Character (Dispositions) While we explicitly teach character traits like "Resilience" and being a "Contributor," we do not grade dispositional competencies. Instead, students engage in self-reflection on these traits, and this feedback is included in report cards to communicate growth without assigning a score to a child's character.

Professional Excellence & Collaboration

At AISJ, we believe that our vision to "Inspire learning to build our better world" applies just as much to our adults as it does to our students. We expect our educators to embody the same dispositions we develop in students - being curious, resilient, and globally connected - while adhering to high professional standards.

Our Teacher Competencies
Our teachers are measured against a specific framework designed to ensure excellence in every classroom. These competencies guide our hiring, professional development, and evaluation processes:

• Planning for Learning:
  • Curriculum Design: Creating personalized, challenging learning sequences that build on prior knowledge and ensure transfer.
  • Collaborative Planning: Partnering across disciplines to create cohesive experiences that connect global contexts.
  • Inquiry-Based Learning: Designing flexible conceptual units that honor student choice and multiple pathways to understanding.
     
• Maximizing Teacher Efficacy:
  • Student Agency: Creating self-directed learners who think critically, set goals, and drive their own learning journey.
  • Research-Based Instruction: Implementing proven teaching strategies that adapt to individual student needs through continuous assessment.
  • Collaborative Leadership: Building a learning community where students develop leadership skills through structured collaboration.
     
• Promoting Relationships, Community, & Culture:
  • Inclusive Environment: Creating a space that embraces diversity, challenges stereotypes, and connects learning to students' real-world cultural contexts.
  • Growth Mindset: Fostering a culture of calculated risk-taking, autonomy, and personal responsibility.
  • Community Partnership: Building strong partnerships with families and actively participating in the broader school community.

 Collective Teacher Efficacy  
Research by John Hattie demonstrates that "Collective Teacher Efficacy"—educators working together with the belief that they can positively impact student learning—produces the single biggest impact on student success.

To support this, we have dedicated Professional Growth and Collaboration Time (PGCT) every Wednesday afternoon. During this time, teachers engage in:

• Impact Teams: Collaborating to ensure consistent expectations across all sections of a course.
• Calibration: Working together to guarantee fair and consistent grading for every student.
• Inquiry Cycles: Analyzing data to determine the best next steps for instruction.

Continuous Improvement & Support
We provide a robust support system to help teachers meet these competencies, including:

• Instructional Coaches: Specialized coaches in every division who support personalized refinement of practice.
• Global Expertise: Regular visits and workshops from renowned international consultants.
• Personalized PD: Opportunities for teachers to choose workshops and courses that align with their professional goals.

By investing in our teachers, we ensure that every student benefits from the collective expertise of a team, rather than being limited to the skills of a single educator.