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Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Teacher Staffroom, where we catch you up on the latest evidence, insight, and action in education. I'm Dominique Russell.
It’s our first episode of Teacher Staffroom for 2025, and there’s plenty to take you through today to catch you up on content that’s kicked off our publication schedule for term one here at Teacher. If you’re new to Teacher Staffroom, or it’s been a little while since you’ve last listened to the series, don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, I’ll 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 might be relevant to your school context. Let's jump in.
If you’re listening to this episode as soon as it’s gone live, you might have seen that last week, a new report looking at PISA data on student maths confidence was released. The data is from the latest cycle of PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment, and was analysed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The report is part of their ongoing ‘Snapshot’ series, which takes findings from ACER's global education studies that Australian schools, students and teachers participate in, and highlights a specific issue of interest.
So, this particular Snapshot, like I say, looked at mathematics confidence and also mathematics self-efficacy. Now, perhaps most interestingly if you’re listening to this as a classroom teacher or school leader, is the finding that previous exposure to similar mathematics tasks that appear in assessments significantly increases both student mathematical self-efficacy and confidence.
So, PISA 2022 had actually asked students how often they had encountered 9 different kinds of mathematical tasks at school and it also how confident they felt being able to solve the 9 different tasks. The data show a strong correlation between high exposure to the maths tasks at school, and their confidence in being able to solve those tasks. Here’s a quote from the report on why this is an important finding:
When they encounter problems that resemble ones they have previously solved, students are more likely to draw on their prior knowledge and problem-solving strategies. This familiarity reduces anxiety and boosts confidence, creating a positive feedback loop where increased confidence encourages more practice and exploration of mathematical concepts. Exposure to similar tasks also allows for skill reinforcement.
So, that brings me to a question for you to think about. Reflect on the most recent mathematics assessment your students completed. Did they have opportunities to work through similar mathematics tasks before that assessment?
If you follow Teacher on LinkedIn or X, you’ll know we spent the first week of February at Research Conference 2025. The conference is hosted by ACER and was held in Melbourne. This year, the theme was ‘Transforming learning systems’. We were really busy meeting with educators and system staff, and, of course, managed to squeeze in 4 sessions from keynote speakers (some of them international), some panel sessions, poster presentations and a lot more.
The conference was opened by ACER Chief Executive, Lisa Rodgers, and one quote of hers really stood out to me, so I wanted to share it with you today. Here’s what Lisa said:
Educators I’ve spoken to tell me it’s one of the few jobs where you’re never finished. It might not have the hours of an ICU doctor or a surgeon or indeed, politicians, who endure parliamentary sittings well into the morning. But it doesn’t have the opportunity to hand it over to another professional, who can take it from here at the end of a long shift. There’s always more that can be done – that plan for that class, a new consideration in regard to that student’s learning goals and how much progress we can attain.
Now, one of the keynote addresses at Research Conference was delivered by Professor Geoff Masters. He recently published a piece with us, which was titled: ‘Will schools of the future be different?’
In the piece, Geoff outlined 3 areas of where learning might evolve by the year 2040. Firstly, more flexible learning; second, broader learning priorities; and third, a greater focus on continuity. It’s a fascinating piece that leaves a lot of food for thought, and I really encourage you to read it in full at our website, teachermagazine.com. Right now, though, I’ll leave you with a short quote from Geoff for you to reflect on.
In 2040 there is likely to be a changed attitude to time. Rather than expecting all students to learn in lockstep, students who require more time will have it; students ready to advance to more challenging material will be able to. The current practice of holding time constant and allowing student success to vary is likely to become less common than holding standards constant and allowing individuals the time they require to reach them.
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So, at the time of recording this episode, one of our most popular articles for February has been a reader submission from educational leader, Michael Rosenbrock, and his colleagues. The article is titled: The power of 'pruning' – how one school is doing less to achieve more, and, as I’m sure you can guess, it talks about how schools can stimulate new growth through strategic removal, and reshaping practices for long-term sustainability. The article explains the pruning process and how it can be broken down into 3 phases and it also shares an example of a pruning journey at a Victorian primary school, Cranbourne East Primary School. Here’s a quote from an Assistant Principal at that school about the process:
By giving staff voice and agency in the process, staff felt more a part of the change management journey; they could better understand the school-wide priorities and maintain momentum without feeling overwhelmed.
The article also posed some reflection questions for both leadership teams and individual educators. Let’s have a think now about the questions for leadership teams: What signs of the additive trap do you see in your own school? Which area might offer the safest entry point for a pruning experiment? How could you engage colleagues in identifying pruning opportunities? And, what existing improvement structures could pruning link to?
An area that’s been identified as one teachers and schools need more support in, is global citizenship education. The latest episode in our Global Education series unpacks a new toolkit for Global Citizenship Education. I spoke with ACER Senior Research Fellow, Rachel Parker, about what the toolkit is, how it was developed, and the 4-phase inquiry-based learning cycle that forms the basis of the toolkit. It's an insightful episode and if you are looking to perhaps improve or assess how you’re developing global citizenship with students, scroll down slightly in your podcast feed to listen to that episode next.
One of the activities recommended as park Global Education Monitoring Toolkit is a KWL chart. So, K stands for know, W for want to know, and L is for learned. Here’s a clip of Rachel explaining that process:
One of the activities in terms of involving learners in the discovery process involves a KWL chart – which, K is know, W is want to know and L is learned. So, you would map out the first 2 letters of the chart in the first part of the process, and then after implementation, you describe what you've learned. So, it's a way of bringing that learning to the fore, recording what you've learned and how you've learned it. It also includes ways to mind map and a compass point activity.
So, that brings me to another question for you to reflect on. Is a KWL chart something you’ve used in your classroom when conducting an inquiry-based learning cycle? If so, how did it enhance student outcomes? Or if not, how could you use this strategy in the future?
And finally, one more piece we published recently comes from Professor John Munro, who unpacked differentiation for gifted students. There’s so much in this piece for classroom teachers and school leaders wanting to drive improvement in this area.
In the article, Professor Munro talks through 3 areas of differentiation which are: the curriculum, the teaching and the classroom culture. He also shared some examples of what these could look like in the classroom. Here though, I’ll share just one insight from him in the area of differentiating the curriculum. Here’s what he said:
One approach is to locate the students in a class that is learning higher-level content. A second approach involves modifying the curriculum in the regular classroom; the students learn higher-level content in their classroom. The second approach requires teachers to have a sound understanding of the curriculum and the ability to generate more complex, sophisticated versions of the topics they teach.
So, with that in mind, here’s a final task for you to consider. With a group of colleagues, choose a topic you’re planning to teach soon. What might a ‘high-level version’ of this topic look like?
That’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. I’ll leave the links to the full articles and podcast episodes I mentioned today in the transcript of this podcast episode, which you can find under the podcast tab at our website. We’ll be back with a new episode very soon.
You’ve been listening to a podcast from Teacher magazine, supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.
