Teacher Magazine (ACER)

In the final episode of our 3-part miniseries on world-class learning systems, Jo Earp and Professor Geoff Masters discuss how schools and communities in British Columbia, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong and South Korea are working together to best meet individual student learning and wellbeing needs.

Host: Jo Earp

Guest: Professor Geoff Masters

Sponsor: Grok Academy (grokacademy.org)

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

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

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

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

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

School Assembly is the podcast where we explore what it takes to build a school from the ground up. Bemin Secondary College has just opened, and important work is underway for setting the pathway for teaching and learning, so in our latest episode we talk about instructional models.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest: Jo Camozzato

As staff and students around Australia settle into the 2024 school year, we’ve been busy at Teacher sharing content to help you with your planning. In this first episode of Teacher Staffroom for 2024, we bring you up to speed with a selection of these stories so you don’t miss a thing.

Host: Dominique Russell

National awards are just one way of recognising the outstanding work of teachers, school leaders and other education staff, and their impact on student outcomes. The longstanding Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching, recognising one primary and one secondary STEM teacher for their outstanding contribution to the field, is just one example.

The 2023 winners were announced late last year as Donna Buckley from John Curtin College of the Arts in Western Australia, and Judith Stutchbury from Kalkie State School in Queensland. We had the pleasure of speaking with Donna and Judith late last year about the work they’ve been recognised for.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guests: Judith Stutchbury and Donna Buckley

Professor Geoff Masters, CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Research, joins Teacher for a series on world-class learning systems. In Episode 1, we find out more about the 5 systems he’s been exploring for a multi-year study commissioned by the National Centre on Education and the Economy in Washington DC.

Host: Jo Earp

Sponsor: MacKillop Seasons