In Australia, we’re at the start of another school year. That likely means new students and possibly a new learning space to set up. For those students who are moving up from preschool or primary or for those educators who switched jobs in the summer, it could mean getting to grips with completely different surroundings at a new school. In this special episode, we’ve gathered a panel of experienced teachers and leaders, who will be sharing their priorities, strategies and tips for those first few weeks and for a successful year. There’s some great advice on things like classroom displays, professional learning needs, authentic activities, positive behaviour management, keeping on top of your email inbox and there’s lots more – so, let’s jump in.
Host: Jo Earp
Guests: Rebecca West, Holly Millican, Nicole Wilson, David Webster, Lisa Seewraj, and Alex Wharton.

Podcast panel: Tips and strategies for making a successful start to the year

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Educational Technology

Our guest for Episode 90 of The Research Files is Dr Sharon Wagner, a casual academic and researcher at Western Sydney University. She recently co-authored a book chapter with colleague Professor Loshini Naidoo titled 'Engaging parents of refugee backgrounds in their children's education: insights from Australia'. This particular chapter draws on data from 2 different Australian studies, covering Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania, and importantly the participants were families and educators – so there’s a really interesting exploration of the topic from those differing perspectives. So, we’ll be chatting about things like parent-teacher interviews, education jargon, language barrier, system expectations and lots more. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Dr Sharon Wagner

Engaging parents from refugee backgrounds

School Assembly is the podcast that explores what it takes to build a new school from the ground up. In Episode 8 of Season 2 we catch up with Bemin Secondary College Principal Jo Camozzato to talk about meeting student needs – including differentiation, subject choices and external partnerships to bolster staff expertise.
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Jo Camozzato

School Assembly S2E8: Meeting individual student needs

We know that supporting a student’s welfare is a priority for teachers, leaders, and school staff. But what this looks like can vary based on a school’s needs and context. Recently at Teacher, we’ve been looking at new research into a number of aspects of student welfare – from anxiety, to menstruation, to vaping. In this episode, we get you up to date on this latest research news. 

And, like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be sharing some other highlights with you, and we’ll be posing some questions throughout the podcast, so feel free to pause the audio as you go, gather some colleagues, and discuss together how these stories might be relevant to your school context. 

Host: Dominique Russell

Supporting student welfare – vaping, menstruation and anxiety

It’s well-known from existing research that boys tend to have more positive attitudes towards STEM than girls do at school. We also know that students’ perceptions of the classroom environment have a powerful impact on their engagement and their learning outcomes. 

A new study has investigated the classroom experiences of boys and girls participating in integrated STEM projects (or iSTEM) to see how they differ, and also to better understand how the classroom experiences of females might impact their participation in STEM. Specifically, the research team were eager to understand the emotions of the boys and girls in the classroom and how this could play a role in their learning and engagement. 

It’s the first time classroom emotional climate has been considered in research on gender differences in STEM learning. So, in order to investigate this, a research team from Curtin University in Western Australia needed to develop and validate a new research tool. In this episode we're joined by the lead author, Rekha Koul, to find out more about the process of developing and validating this tool, and, of course, their research findings.

Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Rehka Koul

Gender differences in classroom emotional experiences

Our guest for this special miniseries is Professor Geoff Masters, CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Research. His new book, 'Building a World-Class Learning System, Insights from Some Top-Performing School Systems', explores what's happening in British Columbia, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, and South Korea. In the first episode, we talked about the big questions that school systems around the world are grappling with. We also looked at some of the reforms in these 5 jurisdictions, including the core characteristics of a world-class curriculum. Our topic for this episode is creating the conditions for all students to learn successfully. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Professor Geoff Masters

Podcast panel: Tips and strategies for making a successful start to the year

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