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In this episode of The Research Files, we’re looking at a project that was conducted in New Zealand, and it’s all about game-based learning practices. Our guest is Rachel Bolstad. She’s a Senior Researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) and began this research with the aim to investigate how games of all kinds might deepen and enrich student engagement with learning across the curriculum. Students as young as Grade 3 and as old as Year 13 were involved, along with their teachers, and the results really do point to the potential game-based learning could have.

In today’s episode of our School Improvement series we're joined by Tasmanian educator Steve Harrison. Steve is Assistant Principal in Senior Secondary at Huonville High School, and he also coordinates the nationally accredited Aquaculture course at the Huon Valley Trade Training Centre – a vocational training centre which was established in 2012 for both student and adult learners. He joins us today to chat about the establishment of the centre, who was involved in the process and the courses available to students. Steve also shares more about the hands-on skills that students are learning in particular industries like Aquaculture, as well as the broader ‘soft skills’ that they could apply to any future employment opportunities. And importantly, Steve also shares more about the success of the program and how students are choosing to move into the Tasmanian Aquaculture industry once they leave school. We cover a lot in today’s episode, but to kick things off, I ask Steve to explain why there was a need in the

Australia’s school principals are overwhelmed by the amount of work they’re doing; they’re having great difficulty sleeping; and they are experiencing high rates of offensive behaviour and physical attacks, according to 2018 data collected for the Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey. The survey monitors school principals', deputy or assistant principals’ health and wellbeing annually. Since it first began in 2011, data has been collected from about 50 per cent of Australia’s 10 000 principals. Associate Professor Philip Riley from Australian Catholic University’s Institute of Positive Psychology and Education is the survey’s chief investigator and he is our guest in this episode of The Research Files. In today’s chat we discuss some of the interesting points to come out of this data collection, and why principals receive interactive feedback after completing the survey. We also discuss the impact that long work hours are having on principals’ wellbeing, their family life and their ability to maintain a he

In today’s episode I’m going to share some of the interesting interviews and articles we’ve published on Teacher this month. There were plenty to choose from but I’ve gone ahead and selected the pieces that I think you’d find the most useful in your own school settings. After all, here at Teacher we’re always focusing on the practical ways that you can use the research in your own classrooms. Throughout the episode you’ll hear me posing lots of questions. They’re designed to get you talking with your colleagues – in staffrooms or team meetings perhaps – and to get you thinking critically about the content we’re sharing.

We’re taking you to the Northern Territory in this episode of Teaching Methods, where a primary school was purposefully built to house classrooms of students taught by co-teachers. The school, Rosebery Primary, is in its ninth year this year, and Principal Gail Smith joins us on the line today to discuss how co-teaching has improved outcomes for students, how trusting co-teacher relationships are maintained and some possible hurdles to adopting the process. We begin this episode with Gail providing some context of her school.

Teacher Staffroom is an opportunity to change the pace a little, and really take some time out with your colleagues to discuss what implications the content we’ve covered recently could have for your own school setting. You’ll hear me posing some questions throughout the episode, so you can chat about your thoughts with co-workers, and let us know where those conversations end up.

Imagine knowing you have a one in 10 chance of winning US $1 million. Well, that’s the reality for Rooty Hill High School teacher Yasodai Selvakumaran. Yasodai has been an educator for the past nine years and has won a slew of awards throughout her career. But this year, she has found herself amongst the top 10 finalists for the 2019 Global Teacher Prize, an award that recognises one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the teaching profession. Yasodai is a Humanities teacher and a Leader in Professional Practice at her western Sydney school. She’s passionate about her job and the students she works with. She joins us today to talk about her interest in social justice, how she connects with students from different backgrounds and how she uses her lessons to help students to understand the world around them and their place in it. We also discuss her approach to personalised learning plans and how to go about building confidence in students.

Our guest today is Dylan Wiliam – Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London. He’s a former school teacher, over the last 15 years his academic career has been focused on the use of assessment to support learning, and he now works with teachers all over the world on developing formative assessment practice. We caught up with him in Melbourne to talk about effective questioning in the classroom. Over the next 20 minutes, he’ll be explaining what’s wrong with the traditional teacher approach of ‘I’ll ask a question and you put your hands up to answer’, sharing a classroom display technique called ‘the parking lot’, and describing how to plan your lesson around checkpoints that he calls ‘hinge questions’.

Welcome to the first episode of a new series. Our podcast subscribers have told us that they love the option to listen (and learn of course) during the daily commute, while they’re out for a walk, taking a break with a cuppa and even doing the household chores (apparently we make a particularly good soundtrack for cooking and hanging out the washing). So, with that in mind, we’ve decided to introduce another way for you to catch up with all things Teacher.

My guest today is someone I originally discovered on Twitter. Craig Heeley is an educator living in Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, and this year he landed his first ever Head Teacher role at Lemington Riverside Primary School. Over the past few months, he’s been sharing his experiences in the new Head Teacher role on Twitter, and he’s been mustering up lots of engagement and encouragement from educators around the world that are keen to follow his journey. I catch up with Craig in today’s podcast to talk more about the strategies he’s employed to get to know the staff, parents and students in his school community. We also chat about navigating challenges as a school leader, the role of mentoring and what he’s looking forward to most about the coming year. Before we launch into the discussion though, I ask Craig to give listeners a brief overview of his career as an educator and how he came to be Head Teacher at Lemington Riverside Primary School.

Our guest for this episode is Dr Joann Fildes, Head of Research and Evaluation at Mission Australia. The charity describes its Youth Survey as the nation’s “largest online annual ‘temperature check’ of teenagers aged between 15 and 19”. In 2018, 28 000 participants across the country shared their views on a range of topics - including school education, their personal wellbeing and who they turn to for help. As you’ll hear later in the episode, Mission Australia works closely with schools to get students involved, and data can be used to inform future planning. The latest data show stress, school or study problems, and mental health are the top three personal concerns for young people. When asked who they’d turn to for help, more than one third said a teacher or school counsellor. We’ll be discussing the role schools and educators can play in providing support and information for students, and creating an environment where they feel they can access that support. A reminder that for help and information you can

My guest today is Dr Jeff Thomas, a lecturer in the Master of Teaching and Graduate Certificate of Education at the University of Tasmania. Jeff’s research and teaching interests include the relationship between engagement and classroom behaviour, and reengagement approaches for disengaged students. With the start of the school year fast approaching here in Australia, many teachers will be busy preparing for those first, initial weeks in the classroom. And according to Jeff, the beginning of the year is an amazing opportunity to engage students, to build relationships and to establish explicit expectations around student behaviour. But, he says, it’s important to plan for positive behaviour. Our discussion today covers many different areas including how to plan for that positive behaviour in your classroom, which routines are critical to establish in the initial weeks of the year, and practical things to keep in mind when responding to particularly challenging behaviours as they arise in class.

A new study examines the gender differences in the friendships and conflicts of both girls and boys with autism, relative to their neurotypical peers. In today’s podcast two of the researchers, Dr Felicity Sedgewick and Dr Liz Pellicano, join us on the line from the UK.

Welcome to this special end of year edition, where we take a trip down memory lane and select some of our favourite podcast moments from 2018. We’ve actually published 26 episodes this year, including a special to mark our 100th, so it’s been a difficult choice.

Our guest for today’s episode of the Research Files is Dr Carol Newall, a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at Macquarie University. She joins us today to talk about a study she led which investigates how a child’s gender impacts an adults’ perception of their ability and their enjoyment of Science. The 80 adult participants in this study were all Macquarie University students, 20 of whom were education students and 60 were studying psychology. These adults were given a fictional profile of an eight-year-old child with the task of teaching that child over Skype. Each child’s fictional profile was experimentally manipulated depending on whether they were boy or girl, and the stereotypes associated with that gender. For example, one child liked tea parties and the colour pink and another liked climbing trees and the colour blue. As Dr Newall will explain in today’s episode, the results from this study revealed that participants rated girls as less academically capable than boys in Physics, and the

In this episode of School Improvement, we're joined on the line by Brett Crawford, the Lead Science teacher at Warrigal Road State School in Brisbane. With over 1300 students and 50 staff members in the primary school, a big task was ahead of Brett when he decided he would work towards improving Science education in every classroom. The impact has been clear – students from Warrigal Road are now entering high school more prepared than ever for Science education and teachers have hit the ground running with inquiry-based Science learning. Brett has just been recognised for his outstanding work this year, after receiving the award for the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science teaching. Later in this episode, he’ll also be sharing details of a couple of his budget-friendly experiments that students really enjoy, but first, Brett explains a little bit about what Science education was like before he began mentoring teachers.

In this episode of Global Education, we're joined on the line by Dr Louise van Rhyn from Cape Town, South Africa. She’s the founder of a program named Partners for Possibility, which pairs business leaders with principals for a 12-month structured leadership development program. The program was recognised internationally after winning a WISE Award for innovative solutions to education challenges and their positive social impact.

What are some practical strategies teachers could use in the classroom to assist students with ADHD? That’s just one of the questions we ask Dr Emma Sciberras in this episode of The Research Files. Dr Sciberras is a Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist from the School of Psychology at Deakin University. Since 2009, she’s been working on the Children’s Attention Project, a research study conducted by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute at The Royal Children's Hospital. The project explores the long-term effects that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (or ADHD) has on children's behaviour, learning and day-to-day living, and also on their parents' wellbeing.

In this episode I’m joined by Alvian Sulungbudi, a senior student from Saint Angela High School in Bandung, Indonesia which is about two hours from Jakarta. Alvian, along with his Mathematics teacher and fellow students, visited Melbourne to attend an awards ceremony recognising their success in the 2018 International Mathematical Modeling Challenge.

In this episode of The Research Files, we're joined on the line by Professor Helen Christensen, The Director and Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute. Black Dog Institute is an Australian organisation focussed on identifying, preventing and treating mental illness. They’re also pioneers in mental health research, and one research area is concerned with suicide prevention. This area is named CRESP, which stands for the Centre of Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention and brings together key researchers to focus on projects and trials with the aim of lowering suicide rates. Professor Christensen is currently leading a phase of CRESP research – which she labels CRESP 2 – that aims to deliver suicide prevention strategies across the country, taking a technology-based approach. Their work will include intervening at both primary and secondary school levels, with strategies centring on the use of different smartphone apps.