Teacher Magazine (ACER) Teacher Magazine (ACER)

Year 10 gifted and talented students at St Matthews Catholic School in regional New South Wales collaborated with academics at the University of Sydney on a research project. In today’s episode we speak with Professor Patrick Brennan and Brooke Colley about how the collaborative nature of this project strengthened students’ STEM skills in areas like data analysis, experimentation and scientific writing.
Host: Dominique Russell
Guests: Professor Patrick Brennan and Brooke Colley

At Teacher magazine, we love to share the research-based innovative classroom activities from educators across Australia, and the world. In today’s episode we're going to take you through some of the engaging learning activities educators have been using during this pandemic. We’ve heard from Arts educators, researchers in Science and teacher educators on pre-service teacher experiences. We’ll take you through all of their stories in today’s episode. 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

My guests today are Allan Shaw, Principal and CEO of The Knox School in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, and Ben Righetti, The Knox School’s Character and Leadership Programs: Lead Consultant and WELS Founder and Director.

They join us today to discuss the Character and Leadership Model implemented at The Knox School between 2017 and 2020. It represents the most significant change in how the school develops student character and leadership capabilities in the history of the school. One of the key aims of the project is to foster the development of young people of character who will be ethical citizens and community leaders. It also involved a major redesign of camps, excursions, outdoor education and community-based learning at each year level, from Year 6 to Year 11. The school has documented its journey, what they learned and the implications of their findings in a report titled 'Character and Leadership Model: Student Character and Leadership Development through Purpose-Designed, Experiential, Community-Based Learning and Projects'.

In this episode we discuss the what motivated them to initiate the project, some of its features, and how they’ve had to adapt it this year in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns, when all camps, excursions and community activities have been either cancelled or postponed.
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Guests: Allan Shaw and Ben Righetti

A new series of research papers relating to science learning in the early years has been published by ACER (the Australian Council for Educational Research). The series aims to help educators of children in preschool to Year 2 to incorporate the latest research into science learning into their teaching.

The authors discuss the significance of the particular subject, the relevant research, how it links to outcomes in the Early Years Learning Framework (or EYLF) as well as some aspects of the Australian Curriculum.

They also describe a handful of activities that can be completed with children to help develop their science inquiry skills, like observing plants, and exploring light and shadows. These activities can also assist educators in monitoring the science learning of the children they’re teaching. They’re suitable for parents whose children are learning at home, as well.

In this episode, we're joined by a co-author of the series, Gayl O’Connor, a Senior Research Fellow at ACER. You’ll pick up on the big emphasis on why integrating science learning in the early years is so beneficial for children and their teachers, and we also discuss identifying and managing common misconceptions children might have about science concepts; and managing a lack of confidence in science as an educator.

Host: Dominique Russell
Guest; Gayl O'Connor

Teacher content draws on the wealth of knowledge and expertise that exists within the education community. This month, we’ve had the opportunity to speak with several experts in education on a range of different topics, and in today’s podcast, we take you through some of the highlights.
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Sponsor: Bank First

With students returning to face-to-face classes here in Australia, we thought it might be a good time to take a breath and reflect on what’s certainly been an intense couple of months for everyone. Our guest in this episode is Professor Pauline Taylor-Guy, Director of the ACER Institute and the Centre for School and System Improvement. We’ll be talking about what’s happened and where to from here – continuity of teaching and learning during COVID-19, trying to understand and mitigate the impacts on student outcomes, how schools have adapted to ‘emergency remote teaching’, and how the experience could lead to future changes and innovations in practice.
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Pauline Taylor-Guy
Sponsor: EnhanceTV