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As we settle in to the 2021 school year, teachers and school leaders are certainly grappling with the continued disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But how can school communities begin to implement change from things already learned from previous periods of remote teaching and learning? For instance, how has remote teaching and learning changed the way school communities collaborate? How can schools work more effectively with tutors to support students who might have fallen behind last year? These are two topics we’ve covered at Teacher recently, and in today’s episode we’re going to take you through some of the most important points. And, like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions throughout the 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

How can teachers go about identifying the underlying causes of a student’s behaviour, and then approach responding to it in a respectful and effective way? To dissect these questions further, we’re joined today by Senior Lecturer at Monash University, Dr Erin Leif, and PhD student and former primary school teacher, Russell Fox. Erin joined Monash University in 2018 after working as a therapy assistant in a school for children with developmental disabilities in Massachusetts in the United States and completing her masters and doctoral degrees in behaviour sciences. Now, in her capacity at Monash University, Erin heads up a postgraduate course in applied behaviour analysis. Russell’s PhD research – which you’ll hear him speak about throughout the episode – focused on understanding what is required to support teachers to successfully and sustainably implement evidence-based behaviour support practices, specifically School-wide Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (or SWPBIS). Host: Dominique Russell Guests: Russell Fox, Erin Leif

What contributes to a teacher’s decision to leave the profession? And, at the same time, why do others thrive and find success and personal fulfillment at work? Hugh Gundlach is a researcher and pre-service teacher educator at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. He is completing a PhD on teacher wellbeing and retention, exploring the reasons why some teachers feel satisfied in their jobs, while others choose to leave the profession altogether. In today’s School Improvement episode, Hugh delves into his research and explains what attracts people to the teaching profession in the first place, some of the key reasons some people choose to leave, and shares some anecdotes from teachers who’ve found practical ways to manage the pressures of the job with success. He also shares insights into how school leaders can better support staff to feel successful in their roles. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Hugh Gundlach Sponsor: Bank First

Welcome back to a new school year. We know that for many of you, 2020 brought a whole host of unique challenges to the way you teach, collaborate with others, and undertake professional learning, amongst many other things. We hope you all enjoyed a well-deserved break and are ready to face whatever 2021 will bring. Over the past few weeks, here at Teacher we’ve been busy putting together content to help support you for the year ahead, and in today’s episode we're going to take you through some of the highlights. We’ll be discussing school leadership, gifted education, setting up your classroom and resources for planning. Host: Rebecca Vukovic

In October last year, the winners of the annual Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching in primary and secondary schools were announced. Darren Hamley from Willetton Senior High School in Western Australia and Sarah Fletcher from Bonython Primary School in the ACT were awarded with the prizes, and they both join us in today’s episode. Darren Hamley, who is the coordinator of Willetton Senior High School’s gifted and talented program, was recognised for his efforts to use science to promote environmental issues, as well as his implementation of several extra-curricular programs. Sarah Fletcher is the STEM specialist at Bonython Primary School and has been recognised for her contributions to STEM teaching, both within her school, and in the wider community. Sarah is also motivated by her view that learning happens most effectively when students have an emotional attachment to the topic. We caught up with both Sarah and Darren at the end of last year to discuss the work they’re doing in these areas in their own school contexts to improve science learning. Guests: Darren Hamley, Sarah Fletcher Host: Dominique Russell Sponsor: QUT's Faculty of Education

It’s no surprise that a teacher’s self-efficacy has a huge impact on their classroom teaching. But what aspects of work as a beginner teacher has an influence on how perceived self-efficacy develops? A research report has looked into this and we're joined in this episode of The Research Files by two of the paper’s co-authors, Professor Helen Watt from the University of Sydney and Professor Paul Richardson from Monash University. Host: Dominique Russell Guests: Paul Richardson and Helen Watt

Well, we’re at the end of another year and what a year it’s been for everyone. It’s been a massive effort from teachers, school leaders, parents and students – everyone really pulling together to keep going through the pandemic lockdown and then the return to a different school life than before. From the Teacher podcast team then, we started the year at our recording studio in Melbourne and we’re ending it still working remotely from home. We’ve spoken to some amazing educators during 2020, and we’ve spoken to experts around the world to bring you the latest in education research. So, today we’re going to take a look back at some of our personal highlights. Let’s get started.

Andreas Schleicher – Director for Education and Skills at the OECD and long-time Teacher columnist – joins us from Paris for this episode to give his take on all things 2020, talk about the longer term impacts of the school shutdowns and share how different education systems have responded to the pandemic restrictions. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Andreas Schleicher

You might’ve noticed we’ve been placing a real emphasis on wellbeing at Teacher recently. We’ve looked at new research into student wellbeing, resilience, and launched a new publication dedicated to educator wellbeing outside of the classroom. Like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we'll take you through these topics, along with other noteworthy stories. 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 Sponsor: Charles Sturt University

We recently brought you news of an Australian study showing that having a qualified teacher librarian on staff is associated with improved student literacy outcomes. Those findings stem from a 2019 census commissioned by the School Library Association of South Australia and carried out by a team from the Australian Council for Educational Research. The wide-ranging survey collected data on school library staffing, facilities, funding, and support, and as you’ll hear, researchers also carried out a review of every school website. The findings have been published in the report School libraries in South Australia: 2019 Census. Lead author, ACER Senior Research Fellow Dr Katherine Dix, is our guest today. We’ll be discussing the importance of school libraries, some of the different models being used by schools, provision in primary and secondary, and in different locations, and the connection (or disconnection) between the value leaders place on their library and its representation on the school’s public-facing website.

We’re talking about blended learning. It’s an approach adopted by the School of Now – that’s a program launched in 2019 to broaden subject choice for students from two schools in the Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, New South Wales, and connect them with expert teachers. It’s grown since then of course, and it’s fair to say it came into its own during the COVID-19 school shutdown. Our guest is Maura Manning, Director of Learning in the diocese. We’ll be talking about how the blended learning model operates at the School of Now, what it means for teachers and teaching, the focus on equity of access, and how students are supported – both online and at their home schools.

Changing school practices means everyone working together – leaders, teachers, support staff, students, parents and the wider community – toward the goal of improving outcomes for students, including their levels of achievement and wellbeing. At Teacher, we’ve heard plenty of inspiring school improvement stories, and in today’s episode we're going to take you through some recent highlights. Like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll take you through these topics, along with other noteworthy stories. 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 Sponsor: Bank First

Teachers are asked to respond to new and uncertain situations all the time – from keeping abreast of curriculum and subject knowledge updates to making quick pivots when a lesson isn’t quite going according to plan. Our topic for this episode is teacher adaptability and our guest is Dr Rebecca Collie – a DECRA Fellow and Scientia Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology in the School of Education at UNSW. Dr Collie and colleagues recently published a paper in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, on their study into adaptability among science teachers in schools across eight countries. We’ll be talking about the study findings, and the research around teacher adaptability. We’ll also talk about the link between teacher adaptability and self-confidence, behaviour management and student self-efficacy. And, there’ll be some recommendations for school leaders in there around the importance of professional learning communities. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Rebecca Collie Sponsor: Bank First

In today’s episode we're joined by Principal Elizabeth Humphries and Assistant Principal Nicole Wilson from East Derwent Primary School in Tasmania. Since 2018, they’ve been on a journey of school improvement which has seen significant progress in student engagement and achievement, as well as staff retention and teacher welfare. We’ll discuss the steps they’ve taken which have resulted in suspensions at the school decreasing by 75 per cent and fewer staff members leaving the school. A big part of this journey has been the school’s involvement in a Tasmanian Department of Education initiative called Refocus Teaching and Learning, which will be explained in much more detail later on in the episode. Host: Dominique Russell Guests: Elizabeth Humphries, Nicole Wilson Sponsor: Bank First

The content published on Teacher magazine this month has been packed full of contributions and insights from those working in the education community – from teachers and school leaders, to researchers, education consultants and university academics. We're always blown away by the wealth of knowledge and expertise that we’re able to share with you, our readers and listeners. In today’s episode, we're going to whip through the contributions we’ve published, giving you some snippets to come from the articles, videos and columns. We’ll also share some insights from the three podcasts we published this month – one on creativity, another on leadership coaching and one that explores co-creating bullying policies. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Sponsor: EnhanceTV

What bullying policies and procedures are in place at your school? Do they focus on a particular age range? And, do you run a specific anti-bullying education program? Our guest today is Dr Lesley-anne Ey, a Senior Lecturer at the University of South Australia. Lesley-anne and her UniSA colleague Professor Barbara Spears have been working with early childhood teachers to identify problems with bullying in their own school context and co-design tailored education and prevention programs. In this episode we’ll be discussing early childhood intervention, the Participatory Design method, and the feedback from the teachers and schools involved. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Lesley-anne Ey

We’re going to be talking about leadership coaching today. Our guests are Karen Snibson, who is Principal of Phoenix P-12 Community College in Victoria, and Angela Mina, a leadership coach and executive consultant. They’ve been working together as part of a two year Menzies School Leader Fellowship Program. Now, the focus of the program is on increasing collective teacher efficacy and it uses an ‘incubator model’ where the leadership Fellows are encouraged to trial strategies and interventions within their own school context. We’ll find out a little bit more about the model and the program, but we’ll be delving deeper into the developmental leadership coaching that’s being used, and how it differs from an approach that existing school leaders may be used to. And, of course, we’ll be chatting about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Karen and Angela’s plans and progress. Host: Jo Earp Guests: Angela Mina, Karen Snibson Sponsor: University of Newcastle, Australia

Which is more creative, the Arts or the sciences? My guest, Professor David Cropley from the University of South Australia, joins us today to discuss this question and to delve into his research into whether any specific differences exist between creativity in the Arts and creativity in STEM. David is an internationally recognised expert on creativity and innovation. He’s appeared on several television programs on the ABC, including Redesign My Brain and Life at 9. The study we’re focusing on today was co-authored by Kim van Broekhoven and Phillip Seegers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The study surveyed over 2000 German undergraduate students enrolled in STEM courses and in Arts courses, to explore how creativity differed across the disciplines. In this episode, David takes us through how they conducted the study, some of the key findings, and the practical implications of this research for educators working in the K-12 space. Guest: David Cropley Host: Rebecca Vukovic

A few reports have been released lately which point to how we’re tracking across the world when it comes to equality and equity in education. At Teacher, we’ve looked a report showing how the experiences of young people living with a disability and without a disability compare. We also highlighted some resources on Indigenous literacy, in the lead up to Indigenous Literacy Day, which aims to improve remote Indigenous children's educational outcomes. Like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll take you through these topics, along with other noteworthy stories in education. 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

We're joined today by Chemistry teacher Chris Buswell from Mountain Creek State High School on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Chris is passionate about integrating technology into science and leveraging opportunities for students in their local community. He’s worked hard for years towards both of these goals and student outcomes and their post-school destinations are really reflecting this. As you’ll hear in this episode, Chris has facilitated the use of virtual reality with senior secondary students to help them understand complex chemistry concepts through a partnership with their local university, the University of the Sunshine Coast. He’s also part of a network of schools who have partnered with schools in Papua New Guinea for a program which aims to empower future leaders in STEM. And, of course, he’s doing important work as well with younger students to build those important 21st Century skills. Guest: Chris Buswell Host: Dominique Russell