Teacher Magazine (ACER)

In this episode of Global Education, we’re joined by Andria Zafirakou from London, the winner of this year’s Global Teacher Prize. The Arts and Textiles teacher explains how she develops meaningful relationships with parents, the importance of professional development and why she thinks schools should stay open outside school hours.

Dr John Halsey joins Teacher for this episode of The Research Files. His final report on the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education here in Australia explores the key issues, challenges and barriers affecting student learning outcomes and suggests four priority areas for action.

Our guest today is Associate Professor Lynn Barnett-Morris from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For the last three years she’s been researching Kindergarten-aged children to determine how playfulness in the classroom is viewed by the children themselves, their classmates and their teachers. The result – a longitudinal study titled 'The education of playful boys: class clowns in the classroom'. She joins The Research Files today, on a bit of a scratchy line from the US, to discuss the key findings, but to kick things off, I ask Lynn to tell listeners why she decided to conduct this research in the first place.

Our guest today is Dr Danny Steele, Principal of Thompson Sixth Grade Center in Alabama in the United States. Danny has worked in public education for more than 25 years, he runs a hugely successful blog and Twitter account, and in 2016 he was named Alabama's Secondary Principal of the Year. He joins us for this School Improvement podcast to talk more about the role of a principal in building and maintaining a positive school culture. We cover a whole range of things including how to build positive relationships with students, the importance of genuinely listening to parents, and making difficult decisions as a school leader.

School leadership is an increasingly complex role and research suggests the demands certainly take their toll on the health and wellbeing of principals, assistant principals and deputy principals. Associate Professor Philip Riley joins The Research Files to discuss the latest findings of the Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety & Wellbeing Survey.

In this episode of The Research Files podcast series we speak to Adjunct Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy at James Cook University, Brian Lewthwaite. We have him on the line from Canada, where he is currently based in the role of program coordinator at the Yukon Native Teacher Education Program. He’s been working on a four phase study centred on Indigenous perspectives of quality teaching in Australia, and joins us today to talk about phase one of this study. This included speaking to 30 teachers, 30 high school-aged students and 30 parents across approximately 12 schools, about what quality teacher practice is for them.

Dr David Armstrong from Flinders University is our guest in today’s Behaviour Management podcast. We explore how certain behaviour management models are simply ineffective, particularly for students with learning or mental health difficulties, and discuss his research in this area.

School leaders play a crucial role in improving outcomes for students and the success of a school community. But, what happens when they leave? In today’s episode of School Improvement we’re talking about succession planning.

In this episode we visit Western Port Secondary College – one of 21 government schools involved in the Australian initiative The Paradigm Shifters: Entrepreneurial learning in schools – to talk to assistant principal Hannah Lewis and student Harry Hainsworth.

Early career teacher attrition is seen as an issue of concern around the world. Here, scholarly articles and media reports regularly state that between 30 and 50 per cent of Australian teachers leave the profession within the first five years. But, where do those figures come from and how accurate are they? A study published in the Australian Journal of Education, suggests there is no robust Australian evidence and data. Author Dr Paul Weldon joins The Research Files to discuss his findings.