Teacher Magazine (ACER)

Building positive relationships is at the centre of the behaviour management strategies used by Dapto High School. The additional focus on boys’ wellbeing has seen the school volunteer for the Top Blokes mentoring program and create a new staff role – Boys’ Mentor. Our guests for this episode of Behaviour Management are Dapto High School’s Deputy Principal Daniel Inness and Boys’ Mentor Andrew Horsley. They’ll be taking us through the mentoring approach, how it works alongside some of the other behaviour management strategies at the school, and some of the savings it’s led to – in time and money.

Interviewee: Daniel Inness, Andrew Horsley

Host: Jo Earp

Sponsor: Monash Education

In this special episode, we take a look back over our favourite moments from the podcasts we published throughout 2019. With dozens of episodes to choose from, this highlights reel takes you through some of our fascinating guests and thought-provoking conversations.

The team at Teacher have spoken to a lot of interesting educators this month, and some great practical pointers for the classroom have come out of these conversations. In this episode, we’ll be looking at some budget-friendly science experiments for both primary and secondary students; some engaging mathematics activities perfect to finish off the term; and some implications for classroom educators of some new research that’s been published.

Host: Dominique Russell

In this special episode, we're delighted to be joined by the two recipients of this year’s Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science teaching. Sarah Finney, a Grade 3 and 4 classroom teacher at Stirling East Primary School in South Australia was named winner for primary school teaching, and Dr Samantha Moyle from Brighton Secondary School, also in South Australia, was named winner for secondary teaching. Both educators are remarkably dedicated to harnessing curiosity about Science in their students, and providing them with authentic, real-world learning experiences.

Interviewees: Samantha Moyle and Sarah Finney

Host: Dominique Russell

Sponsor: University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education

It’s been another exciting month here at Teacher magazine and we're thrilled to share with you just some of what we’ve been working on here at the publication. Today, we're shining a spotlight on the podcasts we’ve published this month, because they’re packed with some really practical strategies that you could apply to your work in the classroom. In this episode, we’ll also be highlighting some of the interesting research that we covered, as well as sharing more about a new monthly series we launched here at the magazine.

Presenter: Rebecca Vukovic

Scoresby Secondary College in Melbourne’s east is on a mission to improve instructional practice by embedding student voice in the school’s improvement cycle. To do this, they’re using the Scoresby Secondary College AMPLIFY model, which are seven interrelated steps which synthesise a range of student voice and agency literature, as well as research on reflective practice and leadership. The goals of the model are simple: to support teachers, students and leaders to work collaboratively with the full range of student perspectives; and, to clearly define what collaborating with students for improvement-related processes looks like. For today’s podcast, we headed out to the school to sit down with Murray Cronin, Head of Curriculum and Pedagogy. We discuss how the school has engaged students in decision making and improvement-related processes, and the impact that student voice has had on school culture. Murray also goes into quite a lot of detail about the AMPLIFY model and how they’re going to further develop it in 2020 and beyond.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Interviewee: Murray Cronin

Podcast supporter: Bank First

How can we teach and assess general capabilities including critical thinking, creative thinking, collaboration, and problem solving skills? This is a challenge that teachers are faced with in 21st Century classrooms. A project, funded by the Centre for Assessment Reform and Innovation (CARI) at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), is working to develop an assessment framework for measuring and monitoring these skills in the classroom. Through a combination of curriculum-oriented assessment tools, learning progressions, and professional development, the project aims to equip teachers with the skills to integrate teaching and assessing of general capabilities into their classrooms.

Here to discuss this today is Dr Claire Scoular, a Research Fellow at ACER and the person charged with leading the project. In today’s episode, she shares more about the assessment tool that’s been developed, and we discuss some practical ways teachers can measure these skills, as well as some the challenges involved in doing so. Claire also shares some of her early analyses of data to come from the trials completed in schools across Australia.

Interviewer: Rebecca Vukovic

Guest: Dr Claire Scoular

Childhood and adolescent anxiety is something many classroom teachers will come face-to-face with, so it’s important to understand what a teacher’s role could be in identifying and managing anxiety. Are there behaviours a teacher could be observing in the classroom that might be typical of anxiety? How can a classroom educator help to reinforce the work of a student’s psychologist or therapist? And, what can teachers do to make their classroom more comfortable and accommodating for students experiencing anxiety?

To discuss all of this, I’m joined in today’s episode by Dr Rowena Conroy, a clinical psychologist who works with children, adolescents and families at the Children’s Private Medical Group in Victoria. We sat down together at the National Education Summit in Melbourne after her presentation on student anxiety.

Presenter: Dominique Russell

Interviewee: Dr Rowena Conroy

As Global Teacher Prize finalist Sarah Mathews once said, ‘numeracy is everyone’s business.’ In this episode, we dive into the stories of educators around Australia who are being so innovative in the way they engage students in mathematics. We’ll take you to a mathematics-based action research project, an exciting new video series, and research indicating student thinking behind their subject selection in senior secondary school. All of that, as well as a quick wrap up of some of the other content you might have missed from us recently.

We’ll be posing some questions throughout, so it’s a great opportunity to sit down with your colleagues to discuss how these stories could be relevant or helpful to your school context. That’s this episode of Teacher Staffroom.

Scotland has recently implemented a new approach to assessing children’s progress in its schools. It’s an online national assessment called the Scottish National Standardised Assessments, or SNSA for short, and it aims to support improvement in classroom practice by providing information to teachers to inform the next steps in learning. All of this is done while still overseeing what’s going on locally and nationally. It’s delivered to students in Primary 1, Primary 4, Primary 7 and Secondary 3 – which in Australia is equivalent in age to Prep, Grade 3, Grade 6 and Year 9.

Now, the particularly unique aspect of this assessment is the fact that it places teacher professional judgement at the centre. It’s also been developed to be accessible for students with additional support needs. And, as well as this, the test is adaptive – so, students are presented with questions according to how well they’ve answered the questions previous.

To find out more about how all of this was achieved, and how the assessment is assisting teachers on the ground, we're joined in this episode by David Leng. He’s a professional adviser to the Scottish Government Learning Directorate. And he’s played a huge part in the development, implementation and continuous improvement of the assessment.

Interviewee: David Leng

Host: Dominique Russell

Podcast supporter: James Cook University