It is important that teachers feel confident to respectfully and effectively address religion and beliefs in diverse classrooms. But it can be difficult, particularly for early career or beginner teachers, to know where to start. Recently, Informit – in partnership with RMIT University and the Australian Council for Educational Research – held a free professional development webinar on this very topic. In that webinar, ACER's very own Pru Mitchell, Manager of Information Services, interviewed Professor Peter Sherlock, Executive Director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture at Charles Sturt University. In today's podcast, we sit down with Peter to follow up on some of the key themes to come from that webinar. In particular, we discuss why it's important for schools to engage with religion and belief systems, how teachers can engage students in meaningful conversations about religion in a respectful way, and the resources available to help teachers to build their confidence in this space. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Professor Peter Sherlock

Earlier this month, Australia’s results from the Teaching and Learning International Survey were released. The OECD’s TALIS is the largest international survey of teachers and leaders, delving into teachers’ professional practices, school learning environments and working lives. Here at Teacher, we covered the results in several different formats. In this episode we’ll run you through the highlights, including an overview article of key findings on staff wellbeing, collegiality and mentoring support; and an infographic that shares some teacher views on the use of AI. We’ll also share an audio grab from our podcast episode with lead author of the Australian report, Dr Tim Friedman, who shares insights on the theme of wellbeing. Of course, we’ll also run through all the other highlights from this month on Teacher that we wouldn’t want you to miss. We’ll be posing questions throughout the episode so we’d encourage you to take a few moments to pause the audio, gather some colleagues, and consider how you could use our content to inform your own practice. Host: Rebecca Vukovic

In this episode of our Research Files podcast series, editor Jo Earp talks to ACER’s Dr Tim Friedman about the latest Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). We’ll be focusing on the theme of staff wellbeing and looking at some of the protective factors when it comes to levels of teacher job satisfaction and stress.

Teacher editor Jo Earp finds out how the Aspect Learning Improvement Collaborative is using a mainstream learning framework developed by Dr Lyn Sharratt, adapted to suit an autism-specific education setting. We’ll hear from Lyn, Aspect Education's Deputy National Director Karilyn Gumley and principals Kaye Perry, Joanne Tidsdell, and Michelle Zikmundovsky.

It’s well known from the research that high quality teaching and leadership teams learn from each other's practices. Recently on Teacher, the leadership team from Warriapendi Primary School in Perth, Western Australia, wrote 3 articles for us all about the journey they’ve been on to build instructional capacity in literacy to improve student outcomes in the area. Today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom will bring you up to date with the insights they shared in those articles, and we’ll also share some of my other recent highlights from our content – which, by the way, is freely accessible at any time over at our website, teachermagazine.com. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you 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: Monash University's Let's Talk Teaching podcast

In today’s episode, Dominique Russell is joined by Chantel Barnes. She’s Principal at Glenora District School in the rural town of Glenora outside Hobart, Tasmania. It’s a small K-12 school, and they’ve made some incredible progress on attendance in the past 12 months. Chantel tells us about how they’ve achieved this, the initiatives that are making a difference in their setting, and her advice for other schools out there. Host: Dominique Russell Guest: Chantel Barnes Sponsor: Monash University

R U OK? Day is a national day of action that reminds Australians to check in with others and ask ‘are you OK?’ In this special episode, Teacher editor Jo Earp is joined by Dr Hannah Brown to talk about some of the signs that it might be time to have the conversation, how to prepare and the 4 simple steps of ask, listen, encourage action and check in. They also discuss some of the support services and resources available.

The past few years have been a challenging time for schools in Australia and around the world. Schools have adapted to the impacts of COVID-19; some have also dealt with natural disasters like floods and bushfires. For school principals – no matter their level of experience – new research shows leading during crises like these has taught them many lessons and led to a transformation of perspectives. In this episode of The Research Files we're joined by Michelle Striepe from Edith Cowan University. She’s the lead author of a new paper titled ‘Lessons from Australasian principals’ experiences with crises: adapting, learning and transforming’. Her research was carried out with colleagues Christine Cunningham, Mohini Devi, David Gurr, Fiona Longmuir, Sylvia Robertson, Adam Taylor and Pauline Thompson, and in our conversation today, Michelle takes us through their findings and, of course, some important implications for school leaders. Host: Dominique Russell Guest: Michalle Striepe

Did you know that here at Teacher magazine we publish content in different formats? From short to long articles, reader submissions, columns from distinguished authors, podcasts, videos or infographics – we publish fresh content on our website 4 days a week. In today’s episode, we're going to share some of the podcast highlights from this month on Teacher, including snippets from those recordings. We’ll also tell you a little more about the different formats, and point you to some of the other highlights from the month that you won’t want to miss. Host: Rebecca Vukovic

For students, a sizeable chunk of their school day is spent at lunch and recess, in the playground and recreation spaces, and outdoor learning areas. So, on this episode we're joined by Dr Fatemeh Aminpour, who is a Research Fellow at the City Futures Research Centre at the University of New South Wales (that’s UNSW Sydney). We’ll be looking at this from the students’ perspective – talking about what works well for children in different situations and how schools can look at those small incremental changes to make better use of what they’ve got. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Dr Fatemeh Aminpour

What are the persistent teaching dilemmas you find yourself thinking about in your spare time and circling back to time and again? Professor Brianna Kennedy from the University of Glasgow joins the podcast to talk about a 2-stage process for cracking persistent challenges in the classroom, how teachers can use it in practice, and the impact it has on student learning and engagement. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Professor Brianna Kennedy

As a teacher listening to this episode, I’m sure you remember your first few years in the profession – the unique challenges you faced and the support that made a difference to you. But what does the evidence say about how schools can best support early career teachers? New research from academics at Monash University has uncovered specific factors that support early career teachers’ sense of belonging at school. Four main themes emerged: teacher collaboration, relationships with colleagues, supporting early career teachers through their early-career journey, and getting early career teachers involved in school decision making. The lead author of the report, Ebony Melzak, joins me for this episode of The Research Files. Ebony is a psychologist and PhD candidate. Together, we’ll go through each theme in detail, what the research says, and how it might look in different school settings. Host: Dominique Russell Guest: Ebony Melzak

Thinking about your own school, how are you helping students understand the many opportunities and pathways open to them, and the training or further education requirements they’ll need to reach their career goals? We know schools play a crucial role in supporting post-school pathways, and recently at Teacher we’ve been exploring many facets of careers education. Today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom will bring you up to date with this coverage, and we’ll also share some of my other recent highlights from our content – which, by the way, is freely accessible at any time over at our website, teachermagazine.com. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you 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

Today we're joined by Pauline Martinot, a medical doctor who specialises in child health and prevention. Dr Martinot pursued a research career in cognitive neurosciences on the developing child and did her PhD at NeuroSpin CEA Paris Saclay. Today, she works as an AI medical and scientific Director at Doctolib in France. Dr Martinot is also the lead author of the groundbreaking study that points to the first year of school as the time and place where a maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys. The results of this study were published in the paper titled Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade, published in Nature last month. The paper reports the results of a 4-year longitudinal assessment of language and mathematical performance of all French first and second graders, representing over 2.6 million children. The researchers found that boys and girls exhibited very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a maths gender gap in favour of boys became highly significant after just 4 months of schooling and reached an effect size of about 0.20 after one year. In this episode, Dr Martinot joins us on the line from France to share how her colleagues went about conducting the study, some more key findings, and the impact of this research on schools and teachers around the world. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Dr Pauline Martinot

Associate Professor Brendon Hyndman is our guest today. If that name sounds familiar to you – Brendon was actually the guest in our first episode of The Research Files all the way back in 2014. After recently taking a pause from academics and spending time working back in the classroom, Brendon is now Associate Dean Academic in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Charles Sturt University, where his main research interest is on the more informal learning and behavioural experiences of students at school. An obvious example of this is school playground experiences – and so our conversation today is all about setting up for healthy play spaces and behaviours in a school setting. As you’ll hear Brendon share in this episode, the impact of healthy play spaces can be profound on students’ feeling of belonging, physical activity opportunities, ability to take risks and intellectual stimulation, just to name a few examples there. He also shares plenty of practical considerations for teachers and school leaders this space. Host: Dominique Russell Guest: Brendon Hyndman

Welcome to Episode 11 of Series 3 of School Assembly – yes, we’ve actually reached the final episode today! So, School Assembly – if you don’t know – that’s the podcast where we find out what it takes to build a school from the ground up. And, for the last 12 months we’ve been following Dan McShea, Foundation Principal of Notre Dame P-12 College in Bells Creek, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. It’s the final episode and that’s where we get a chance to reflect on the journey but also the podcast experience. We’ll be finding out about Dan’s expectations going into the role compared to the reality; there’ll be the usual key learning, challenge and achievement, what’s planned for the next 12 months, and there’s also an invitation to visit! Host: Jo Earp Guest: Dan McShea

Today we’re talking all things maths – as it’s something we’ve published quite a bit on this month. In this episode, we're going to run you through the highlights, including an article on the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge where we speak to the teacher advisors of the Australian winners about the benefits for students, and their own practice. As always, we will be posing questions throughout the episode so feel free to pause the audio, gather some colleagues, and chat about how these articles can be used to improve or inform your own practice. Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Music education is an important part of primary school. It’s got a range of benefits, of course, not only for students’ music learning, but for improving their capacity as a learner more broadly, and there are benefits for their wellbeing too. In Episode 101 of The Research Files we're joined by Dr Rebecca Taylor, a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research. We’re going to be exploring survey data from 2 reports into music teaching and music education in primary schools – they’re all about the ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ music learning is delivered. Our chat certainly provides some food for thought in terms of what you’re doing in your own practice and maybe the supports that you need; if you’re a school leader, maybe what expertise exists within the staff and what their PD needs are. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Dr Rebecca Taylor

Last month we brought you news of a major OECD report on the state of global teenage career preparation. So, in this follow-up podcast we’re going to be sharing an example of how one school here in Australia – Fairhills High School in Victoria – is doing some great work in the area of careers and pathways education. Host: Jo Earp Guests: Bill Exton, Liz Rundle

We’ve reached the penultimate episode of Series 3 of our podcast series School Assembly. Teacher editor Jo Earp talks to Notre Dame P-12 College Principal Dan McShea about distributed leadership and developing a leadership pipeline in a new school. Dan also shares his biggest challenge, key learning and proudest achievement since last month’s episode. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Dan McShea