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