Teacher Magazine (ACER)

Mathematics education has been a clear focus of our editorial content this month, and in this episode of Teacher Staffroom, we’re going to share some of the highlights. At the same time, we’ll be sharing some pieces on curriculum reform and requirements, as well as some contributions written by teachers, school leaders and researchers.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

In today’s world, young people must be financially literate to perform common, day-to-day tasks, like using a debit card or choosing a mobile phone plan. But, how financially literate are teenagers in Australia? And, how do they compare to their international peers?

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (or PISA, as it’s commonly referred to) includes an optional assessment that examines 15-year-old students’ understanding of money matters and financial literacy. This week, the Australian Council for Educational Research released a report that analyses Australian students’ performance in the latest PISA Financial Literacy survey. It’s titled PISA 2018: Financial literacy in Australia.

A total of 117 000 students from 20 countries and economies participated in the financial literacy survey, including over 9400 Australian students from 740 schools.

In today’s episode, we're joined by one of the report’s co-authors, Lisa DeBortoli, a Senior Research Fellow at ACER. We discuss some of the key findings to come from the report and what students were required to do for this assessment. You’ll also hear Lisa share more about the proficiency levels, what they mean, and the kind of knowledge and skills that students are typically capable of displaying at each level, as well as some practical examples.

Guest: Lisa DeBortoli

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Sponsor: University of Newcastle

Year 10 gifted and talented students at St Matthews Catholic School in regional New South Wales collaborated with academics at the University of Sydney on a research project. In today’s episode we speak with Professor Patrick Brennan and Brooke Colley about how the collaborative nature of this project strengthened students’ STEM skills in areas like data analysis, experimentation and scientific writing.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guests: Professor Patrick Brennan and Brooke Colley

At Teacher magazine, we love to share the research-based innovative classroom activities from educators across Australia, and the world. In today’s episode we're going to take you through some of the engaging learning activities educators have been using during this pandemic. We’ve heard from Arts educators, researchers in Science and teacher educators on pre-service teacher experiences. We’ll take you through all of their stories in today’s episode. We’ll also be posing some questions throughout this podcast, so feel free to pause the audio as you go, gather some colleagues and discuss together how these stories could be relevant to your school context.

Host: Dominique Russell

My guests today are Allan Shaw, Principal and CEO of The Knox School in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, and Ben Righetti, The Knox School’s Character and Leadership Programs: Lead Consultant and WELS Founder and Director.

They join us today to discuss the Character and Leadership Model implemented at The Knox School between 2017 and 2020. It represents the most significant change in how the school develops student character and leadership capabilities in the history of the school. One of the key aims of the project is to foster the development of young people of character who will be ethical citizens and community leaders. It also involved a major redesign of camps, excursions, outdoor education and community-based learning at each year level, from Year 6 to Year 11. The school has documented its journey, what they learned and the implications of their findings in a report titled 'Character and Leadership Model: Student Character and Leadership Development through Purpose-Designed, Experiential, Community-Based Learning and Projects'.

In this episode we discuss the what motivated them to initiate the project, some of its features, and how they’ve had to adapt it this year in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns, when all camps, excursions and community activities have been either cancelled or postponed.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Guests: Allan Shaw and Ben Righetti

A new series of research papers relating to science learning in the early years has been published by ACER (the Australian Council for Educational Research). The series aims to help educators of children in preschool to Year 2 to incorporate the latest research into science learning into their teaching.

The authors discuss the significance of the particular subject, the relevant research, how it links to outcomes in the Early Years Learning Framework (or EYLF) as well as some aspects of the Australian Curriculum.

They also describe a handful of activities that can be completed with children to help develop their science inquiry skills, like observing plants, and exploring light and shadows. These activities can also assist educators in monitoring the science learning of the children they’re teaching. They’re suitable for parents whose children are learning at home, as well.

In this episode, we're joined by a co-author of the series, Gayl O’Connor, a Senior Research Fellow at ACER. You’ll pick up on the big emphasis on why integrating science learning in the early years is so beneficial for children and their teachers, and we also discuss identifying and managing common misconceptions children might have about science concepts; and managing a lack of confidence in science as an educator.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest; Gayl O'Connor

Teacher content draws on the wealth of knowledge and expertise that exists within the education community. This month, we’ve had the opportunity to speak with several experts in education on a range of different topics, and in today’s podcast, we take you through some of the highlights.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Sponsor: Bank First

With students returning to face-to-face classes here in Australia, we thought it might be a good time to take a breath and reflect on what’s certainly been an intense couple of months for everyone. Our guest in this episode is Professor Pauline Taylor-Guy, Director of the ACER Institute and the Centre for School and System Improvement. We’ll be talking about what’s happened and where to from here – continuity of teaching and learning during COVID-19, trying to understand and mitigate the impacts on student outcomes, how schools have adapted to ‘emergency remote teaching’, and how the experience could lead to future changes and innovations in practice.

Host: Jo Earp

Guest: Pauline Taylor-Guy

Sponsor: EnhanceTV

Our guest today is Pasi Sahlberg, a Professor of Education Policy at the Gonski Institute for Education at UNSW Sydney. He joins Teacher to discuss the ongoing research project he’s been working on that explores how the widespread use of media and digital technologies is impacting the wellbeing, health and learning of Australian children.

The findings have been published in the Growing Up Digital Australia: Phase 1 Technical Report, co-written with Dr Amy Graham, a Research Fellow at the Gonski Institute. To give you a bit of a snapshot, the first phase of the study asked teachers and school principals to compare what they are observing in their schools and classrooms regarding students’ use of media and digital technologies, to what was happening three to five years ago.

A total of 1876 respondents completed the survey, three-quarters of them were female and, for the most part, respondents were experienced educators, with 48 per cent of the sample having more than 20 years’ teaching experience. Half of the respondents were classroom teachers, 30 per cent were principals and the remainder were involved in early childhood settings, school administration and temporary teaching positions.

In our interview, we delve deep into the findings to come from the study and Pasi shares his insights into how digital technologies impact a child’s readiness to learn in the classroom.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Guest: Pasi Sahlberg

Sponsor; EnhanceTV

With the COVID-19 pandemic comes a dramatic change to education and a lot of questions about the continuation of learning. At Teacher magazine, we’ve published a lot of content looking at navigating this challenge. In this podcast, we take you through some of the highlights.

Host: Dominique Russell

Sponsor: Bank First