Understanding how children learn and develop in the early years is key to supporting strong educational outcomes and lifelong wellbeing. Last month, the OECD released findings from the 2025 Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, or IELS, the first internationally comparable study designed to measure how children are learning and developing at age 5. The study looks across 3 key domains: foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional skills. As we know, the early years from birth to age 5 are a critical period for building the foundations children need to communicate, regulate their emotions, concentrate, solve problems and engage with others.

In today's episode, we're joined by Dr Dan Cloney, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research and Lead Researcher for IELS here at ACER. We unpack some of the key findings from the study, explore what made the assessment design unique, and discuss why it's so important to ensure every child arrives at school with the strongest possible foundations.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Guest: Dr Dan Cloney

As a listener of the Teacher podcast, you’ll know we love to speak with school staff about the incredible work they’re doing in their school settings to improve student outcomes. Equally, though, we know our audience are keen to hear from experts in the field and about important research updates. This month on Teacher, we’ve been busy covering the news of the new International Early Learning and Child Wellbeing Study, the new PISA 2029 innovative domain on media and AI literacy and National Reconciliation Week. Two of our columnists, Professor Martin Westwell and Andreas Schleicher, also published new pieces for us. Today we're going to share the details of all of these stories.

Host: Dominique Beech

In this podcast special, Dominique Beech sits down with Dr Dan Edwards, Acting Head of ACER's Student Learning and Progress Division, to talk about the future of assessment. He shares his insights on how assessment can support students at key transition points across K-12, the impact of AI, and more.

In today's episode of School Improvement, we're going to hear all about the Questions for Thinking program (also known as Q4T) – the professional learning program in place at Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne. We're joined by Gus Humphries, the Q4T lead at the school. Gus is also a Humanities and Politics teacher and has been an educator for 20 years. If his name, or the name of Q4T, sounds familiar to you, it might be because you read the article Gus published on Teacher back in March on this exact topic. In the piece, Gus delved into how and why he developed this professional learning program with the aim to better harness the determination and aspiration of their dedicated teaching staff and support efficient, effective and embedded change in teaching practice. Q4T is a professional learning program that allows teachers to investigate and develop an area of their practice. It's an opt-in, confidential partnership between a partner and a participant that's focused on empowering teachers to meet student learning needs. In our conversation today, Gus expands on the 8 key ingredients the program consists of and the impact it's having on staff and school culture.

Host: Dominique Beech

Guest: Gus Humphries

Here at Teacher magazine, we are lucky to have the opportunity to work with experts across all areas of education. We interview them for articles, record podcasts with them, accept submissions they’ve written specifically for our readers, and share exclusive excerpts from their books. This month on Teacher, we have published so many pieces of content from those working in the sector, and we're excited to share more with you in this episode of Teacher Staffroom. Of course, we’ll be posing questions throughout, so we encourage you to pause the audio, gather some colleagues, and reflect on how you can use these insights in your own school context.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Professor Alex Bowers from New York joins Dominique Beech to discuss his research into school leadership types and teacher professional development needs. The conversation covers the alignment of perceptions between teachers and principals regarding school leadership, his innovative idea for re-organising how we target professional development, and more.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest: Professor Alex Bowers

We’re going to be talking all about improving induction – for both early career teachers and school leaders. Our guest today is Tim Bullard, CEO of AITSL – the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. We’re talking all about their latest Spotlight evidence summaries. Part 1 – Improving Induction for Early Career Teachers explores evidence-based approaches to strengthening teacher induction. It outlines the Guidelines for the Induction of Early Career Teachers in Australia and examines how well-designed induction programs improve teacher wellbeing, retention, and professional growth. Part 2 – Improving Induction for School Leaders explores the benefits of good induction for school leaders, shares how leaders arrive in a leadership role via 3 different pathways, and provides evidence-informed practices to structure induction programs for new school leaders. , We dive into some of the findings from those Spotlights. There are plenty of practical tips – around mentoring, support and adapting the induction for your specific school context.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Guest: Tim Bullard

Our guest on today’s podcast is Kayla Borg from St Mary’s Primary School in Whittlesea, Victoria. She shares how she went about co designing a podcast lesson for her year 5 and 6 students in partnership with the eSmart team at the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, what her students learned from this experience, and why real world, student led digital learning can have such a powerful ripple effect across the entire school community.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

In our latest reader survey – which we run annually to give our audience the opportunity to let us know about their experiences in the education sector and how we can better support your professional practice through our content – you let us know that you’d like more content on the topic of curriculum implementation. We’ve been hard at work having a look at this on Teacher in the first few months of 2026, and in today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom we're going to take you through some of my highlights from recent weeks. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you throughout this podcast, so you can 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

Today, we're delighted to welcome Mandy Nayton, Educational and Developmental Psychologist and Chief Executive Officer of the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation. Our conversation is going to delve into all things phonics, word study, vocabulary skills, and more. Along the way, Mandy will share a range of practical examples, discuss how this work might look across K-12, and you might even learn a new word along the way, just like I did.

Host: Dominique Beech

Guest: Mandy Nayton