Teacher Magazine (ACER)

Associate Professor Linda Hobbs joins The Research Files to talk about a new Australian study exploring girls’ participation and engagement in STEM subjects.

It’s been a big year for Teacher magazine podcasts – we recently broke through the 100 000 listens milestone! To mark the end of another great 12 months, we have put together some clips from our favourite podcasts for 2017.

Results from the latest cycle of the PIRLS assessment (that’s the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) show the literacy achievement of Year 4 students in Australia has improved. However, there are significant achievement gaps by gender, Indigenous status, socioeconomic status and school location. The Australian Council for Educational Research has just published the details in PIRLS 2016: Reporting Australia’s results and lead author of that report, ACER Deputy CEO (Research) Dr Sue Thomson, joins us now.

In today’s podcast special we’re speaking with Neil Bramsen and Brett McKay – two educators who are changing the lives of the students in their schools by instilling a love of Science in them. Both teachers were named winners of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching – one for primary and one for secondary. Here, they share more about how they’ve formed innovative partnerships with scientists, the community and other schools.

In today’s Behaviour Management podcast we talk to Dr Anna Sullivan from the University of South Australia. She’s been working on the Behaviour at School study which explores the existing state of student behaviour and its management in South Australian schools. Here, she shares her insights into what it means to enact respectful, school-wide behaviour policies and the role of school leaders in doing so.

In this instalment of The Research Files we’ll be discussing student fitness and wellbeing, specifically, two simple exercise programs – the first is a new project aimed at improving adolescent health and wellbeing, and the second is being used by thousands of early years and primary students across the world. We’ll talk to the founder of The Daily Mile, retired Scottish head teacher Elaine Wyllie, later in this episode but our first guest is Dr Jordan Smith from the University of Newcastle, here in Australia. He’s one of the research team working on Burn2Learn, a four year project working with Year 11 students to improve their physical, cognitive and mental health.

For the last three years school leaders and staff at Jordan River Learning Federation Senior School have been focusing on evidence-based teaching and reflection. It’s included the development of a professional learning approach called CCRP – that’s Connect, Collect, Reflect and Progress. Assistant Principal Murray Cronin joined Teacher magazine on the line from Tasmania to talk about the evidence base for the model and what each of the four stages involves.

Are male teachers headed for extinction in Australia? Researchers who carried out the first ever study tracking the trajectory of male participation in the teaching profession say the short answer is ‘yes’. Dr Kevin McGrath joins Teacher to explain more.

Professor Simone Reinhold joins Teacher to discuss inquiry based learning in primary mathematics, including the benefits of students working on a common task with differentiated outcomes, and the role of the educator in finding a balance between explorative and informative learning.

Student participation rates in advanced maths and science subjects is declining. In today's podcast, Michael Jennings, an Associate Lecturer at the University of Queensland joins Teacher to discuss his research which explores factors influencing student selection of senior secondary maths subjects.