There’s so much potential for artificial intelligence and generative AI tools to support teaching and learning, but alongside these exciting opportunities there are challenges and risks. If you’re a teacher or a school leader, you may already be using or experimenting with AI tools – and you certainly won’t be surprised to hear that many of your students definitely are! Our guest for this special episode is Dr Katie Richardson, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research. We’ll be talking about 3 broad areas where AI can enable improvements in education, and what that might look like. Also, what the tools can and can’t do currently, or replace. And we’ll discuss how teachers need to be careful and purposeful in using the different AI tools out there with their students to promote thinking and learning.

Host: Jo Earp

Guest: Dr Katie Richardson

What made you decide to become a teacher? We’ve been looking at teacher recruitment this month, but perhaps from a different lens that you might think. In this episode, you’ll hear about what young people are saying about teaching as a career, how much schools in Australia are growing year on year, and more.

Host: Dominique Russell

Sponsor: This podcast from Teacher is supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.

We speak often about the importance of students having an adequate amount of food to help them focus and learn during the school day. But what about teachers? In today’s podcast special, we’re joined by Tammie Jakstas, former teacher and Accredited Practising Dietitian, to hear about her teacher nutrition study.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest: Tammie Jakstas

We know the global teacher shortage is impacting many different school contexts, and that encouraging young people to consider a career in teaching is an important part of the long term picture. Dr Tracy Woodroffe joins us to discuss her 12-month research project that gathered perspectives from Aboriginal students and teachers. These perspectives informed recommendations to encourage more Aboriginal young people in the Northern Territory to consider teaching.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest: Dr Tracy Woodroffe

We're really excited to share with you some of the highlights from this month, focusing on the incredible podcast episodes we’ve published on Teacher. Throughout this episode we’ll share some snippets from those recordings, as well as highlight some of the other content that has been popular on the site this month.

Speaking of popular, some of the older content in our archive proves to be some of the most useful for our readers, as the views on these articles continue to climb each month. If you’re new to Teacher, or perhaps haven’t come across this content yet, we'll point you in the right direction on how to find some of these popular articles, some with more than a quarter of a million views.

And, like in all Teacher Staffroom episodes, we’ll 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 might be relevant to your school context.

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Late last year, the 2024 recipients of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching were announced. The national Prizes recognise and celebrate the role primary and secondary educators play in inspiring and encouraging students to take up an interest and consider careers in STEM.

So for this episode of School Improvement, we had the pleasure of speaking with Alice Leung from Concord High School in New South Wales and Daniel Edwards from Montello Primary School in Tasmania about the work they’ve been recognised for with this Prize. If Daniel Edwards’ name sounds familiar to you, it might be because we spoke with Daniel early last year all about the value of teaching STEM as a subject. Our conversation with Daniel shares some other great insights, such as some favourite learning activities to run in the classroom.

We also asked Alice to share some of her favourite lesson activities, and we're sure they might be ones you might like to consider working into your lesson planning this year if you’re a secondary science teacher.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guests: Alice Leung and Daniel Edwards

School Assembly is the series where we find out what it takes to build a new school from scratch. We’ve been following Dan McShea from Notre Dame P-12 College on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast since the middle of last year, hearing about the role of Foundation Principal and what it entails – not just in the lead-up to a new school opening, but also the first few months of operation. This is Series 3, and today we’re on Episode 8. So, the topic for this one is policies and processes. Which documents are the responsibility of the Foundation Principal? Is there a template that schools work from? Is it a different procedure for whole-school policies and subject-specific ones? These are just some of the questions we’ll be discussing as Dan gives us a glimpse into the world of strategic planning school leadership.

My guest today is Professor John Munro, a teacher and a psychologist who has taught and researched in gifted education and talent development for 4 decades. The last time I sat down with John was in January 2020 when we recorded a podcast on gifted education – in particular, how to identify these learners, how to understand their learning needs and how to encourage them to reach their potential in the classroom.

Five years on, we sat down again here in Melbourne to discuss themes from his new book published by ACER Press, Leading Improvement for Gifted and Talented Students. In particular, we explore leadership for the provision of gifted education – what it takes to develop a vision, putting together an action plan, upskilling teachers and collaborating with the wider community.

Guest: John Munro

Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Sponsor: This podcast from Teacher is supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.

We hear a lot about the role of educators and schools in developing the essential skills students need for learning and for life – things like critical thinking and collaboration. But, it’s not necessarily a simple thing to support the development of these things in the classroom.

We're delighted to welcome Dr Claire Scoular back to the Teacher podcast today. You may recognise her name – Dr Scoular is a Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research and she’s been working on developing frameworks for the essential skills for learning. The frameworks are designed to support educators to understand the essential skills by defining the skill, breaking it down into aspects that comprise it, and presenting those aspects as observable behaviours. It also identifies different levels of proficiency in the skill. This work has involved collaboration with more than 30 countries around the world to identify and select 5 essential skills.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest: Dr Claire Scoular

Sponsor: Sora

It’s our first episode of Teacher Staffroom for 2025, and there’s plenty to take you through today to catch you up on content that’s kicked off our publication schedule for term one here at Teacher. If you’re new to Teacher Staffroom, or it’s been a little while since you’ve last listened to the series, don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll 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 might be relevant to your school context.

Host: Dominique Russell

Sponsor: This podcast from Teacher is supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.