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In this month’s Research Files we discuss the findings of a three-year project in New Zealand that included analysis of pretend play – where students give voices to toys, objects and digital characters – and early literacy practices.

My guest today is Cath Apanah, Acting Assistant Principal and Head of senior school at Montrose Bay High in Hobart, Tasmania. She joins me today to discuss how her school has been using data to inform their strategic plan, the process they undertook to improve student writing and how they went about upskilling staff to use data effectively. By using data, the staff t Montrose have not only been able to track student strengths and weaknesses, but it has become a powerful tool for teachers to better understand their impact on student learning.

The Grattan Institute released a report that says as many as 40 per cent of school students are unproductive in a given year. Teacher magazine sat down with the report’s co-author Julie Sonnemann to discuss the four school level recommendations that came out of this research.

Videoconferencing technology has changed the face of distance education, but teaching to a camera rather than face-to-face requires additional skills. In this episode, Teacher magazine is joined by Nicky Rehn, Assistant Professor of Education at Ambrose University in Calgary, Canada. Rehn and colleagues Dorit Maor and Andrew McConney, from Murdoch University in Australia, have studied how educators delivering school lessons by videoconference can best build a classroom presence and rapport with their remote students.

What kind of leader are you, and is your leadership style truly effective? After looking the UK’s performance in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study and comparing it to other countries, Dr Alex Hill and his research team decided to find an answer to the question: Why does the UK still lag behind its peers, despite investing more than them? In the process of this research, the team studied over 400 leaders from schools in the UK – the results of which have been published in the Harvard Business Review. In doing so, the team identified that there are five different types of leaders: surgeons, soldiers, accountants, philosophers and architects. Dr Alex Hill, Co-Founder and Director of The Centre for High Performance, joined me on the line from the UK, to discuss why there are five different types of leaders, but only one type that is truly effective.

Our guest for this first episode of our new series on Behaviour Management is teacher, education consultant and author Dr Bill Rogers. An Honorary Fellow of Melbourne University, he shares his expertise on behaviour management, effective teaching, stress management, colleague support and teacher welfare around the globe through lectures, seminars, professional development courses and, of course, with teachers in the classroom.

Many people believe that because young people are digital natives, they are also digital-savvy. But a new report from researchers at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education has found that young people do experience difficulties when it comes to evaluating information they find online. In fact, this research, which tested middle school, high school and college level students, found that 80 per cent of participants thought that sponsored articles were actual articles, and had a hard time distinguishing where this information actually came from. One of the co-authors of the report, Sarah McGrew from the Stanford History Education Group, joined me on the line from California to discuss her team’s findings.

To mark the end of another fantastic year, the Teacher editorial team have taken a walk down memory lane to share some snippets from their favourite podcasts for 2016.

The Programme for International Student Assessment, more popularly referred to as PISA, measures how well 15-year-olds are prepared to use their science, reading and mathematics skills in real-life situations. More than half a million students from 72 countries and partner economies took part in the 2015 test cycle and the results have just been released. The Australian report, PISA 2015: A first look at Australia’s results, from the Australian Council for Educational Research, doesn’t make for pleasant reading. Dr Sue Thomson, ACER Director of Educational Monitoring and Research and lead author of the report, joins me to discuss the results.

The results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were released earlier this week. Conducted every four years, this major international assessment compares the achievements of Years 4 and 8 students in mathematics and science. A report released by the Australian Council for Educational Research, shows that while many other countries have improved, Australian performances have largely stagnated. In fact, the Australian results have been labelled a ‘cause for grave concern’ after they indicated Years 4 and 8 student achievements have flatlined over the past 20 years. I sat down with Dr Sue Thomson, Director of Educational Monitoring and Research at ACER and the report’s lead author to discuss the results.

What sort of learning environments does your school have? Are you making the best use of your teaching space? Our guest on The Research Files this month is Wes Imms, Associate Professor in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and Lead Chief Investigator of the Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change. Over the next four years the research team will be investigating how teachers are using these environments to improve student learning outcomes, and they’ll be sharing strategies and best practice.

The Research Schools Network in the UK is a joint project involving the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Institute for Effective Education. Each school, selected as a leader in bridging the gap between research and classroom practice, receives GBP200,000 – that’s around AUD320,000 – over three years. Teacher caught up with Dr Jonathan Sharples, Senior Researcher at EEF, to find out more.

The guest for this episode is Professor Brian Caldwell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne and Deputy Chair of ACARA. His new book The Autonomy Premium, published by ACER Press, explores the link between student achievement and autonomy in school management and professional practice and includes case studies of Australia government schools. We caught up with him in Melbourne to find out more.

Are teachers ever influenced by bias when it comes to grading student work? This is the focus of a new report from researchers at the University of New England, which looks at different types of potential bias in grading including gender, race and physical attractiveness. Associate Professor John Malouff joins me in this episode to discuss the findings from his research and what schools can do to minimise bias in the classroom.

Welcome to the second part of our Teaching Methods podcast on Engineering. In part one Lyn English, Professor in STEM Education at the Queensland University of Technology, talked about the importance of Engineering in the primary years and the resources available to teachers. Here, she chats to Editor Jo Earp about the Engineering Design Process learning framework, the steps involved in the process, and the role of the teacher in scaffolding learning.

A new study has found that positive teacher-student relationships at age 10 can significantly reduce problem classroom behaviours, and the effects last for up to four years. Teacher talks to lead author Dr Ingrid Obsuth.

Teacher magazine talks to Professor in STEM Education Lyn English about the importance of Engineering in the primary years and resources to support teachers in the classroom.

Three years ago, Nikki Urlich and her colleagues redesigned the teaching and learning of maths at their New Zealand school. The ‘Modern Maths’ program brings together 120 learners and a team of four teachers in an innovative learning environment.

Teacher talks to University of New England academics Dr Jennifer Charteris and Dr Sue Gregory about their research that looks at the impact of the messaging app Snapchat in education settings, and how schools are responding to issues such as cyber bullying and sexting.

Dr Kevin Anthony Perry talks to Teacher magazine about a collaborative research project exploring classroom wellbeing in Denmark.