Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Teacher Staffroom from Teacher magazine, the resource for K-12 educators published by ACER, the Australian Council for Educational Research. I’m Dominique Beech.
As a listener of the Teacher podcast, you’ll know we love to speak with school staff about the incredible work they’re doing in their school settings to improve student outcomes. Equally, though, we know our audience are keen to hear from experts in the field and about important research updates. This month on Teacher, we’ve been busy covering the news of the new International Early Learning and Child Wellbeing Study, the new PISA 2029 innovative domain on media and AI literacy and National Reconciliation Week. Two of our columnists, Professor Martin Westwell and Andreas Schleicher, also published new pieces for us. Today I’m going to share the details of all of these stories. And don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, I’ll be posing some questions for you throughout this podcast, so you can 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 goes live, in Australia we’re in the middle of National Reconciliation Week. It’s a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia. The lead body for reconciliation in Australia, Reconciliation Australia, appointed the 2026 theme as All In, which they say serves as a reminder that reconciliation is not a spectator sport and that all of us must step away from the sidelines and take action to make change.
Narragunnawali is Reconciliation Australia’s Reconciliation in Education program, and they released a range of free-to-use resources for educators to utilise during National Reconciliation Week. We published an article earlier this week sharing what’s on offer – including curriculum resources for early years, primary and secondary.
The team from Reconciliation Australia also spoke to us about how schools and early learning services can make reconciliation meaningful in their settings for learners, and how to keep the momentum going beyond National Reconciliation week. On that point, here’s what they shared with us:
National Reconciliation Week can be a powerful starting point, but reconciliation has the greatest impact when it becomes part of everyday school or service culture. The Narragunnawali platform has professional learning resources and opportunities for educators, as well as curriculum and teaching resources, supporting First Nations voices and leadership within the school community in this vital work. The theme All In reminds us that reconciliation is [everyone’s] responsibility and that meaningful change happens through collective, ongoing action. Schools and early learning services are uniquely placed to help shape generations of young Australians who understand the importance of respect, truth-telling and shared responsibility, not just during National Reconciliation Week, but every day of the year.
We also themed one of our regular content series around National Reconciliation Week. Our bi-monthly article series, Researching education: 5 further readings, looks at a different topic in each edition, and presents you with 5 accessible resources to explore. So in this edition, we shared a paper that explores an approach to addressing gaps in teachers’ Indigenous knowledge, a research summary on cultural responsiveness in education, the Commonwealth Closing the Gap 2025 Annual Report, and more.
You can find the link to that article – and all the articles that I mention in today’s episode – over at our website, teachermagazine.com by clicking on the podcast tab.
This brings me to a question for you to reflect on. With a colleague, discuss together how you could keep the momentum going after National Reconciliation Week at your school. What support would you need to get your ideas off the ground?
I also mentioned at the top of this episode that the OECD has released the second International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study. The study focuses on 5-year-olds and is the OECD’s first international comparative study of early childhood learning and development. Children’s development was measured across 10 domains, grouped into 3 dimensions that provide a holistic picture of early learning beyond simply academic outcomes – foundational learning, executive function, and social-emotional skills.
I encourage you to all read the full article at our website to find out more about the domains, the innovative assessment design, and more details on the 2025 findings.
For now though, I’d like to leave you with a quote from OECD Director of Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher in the report, which I just loved. Here’s what he said.
If you want to understand the future of a country, do not start in its universities. Start in its kindergartens, creches and nurseries. Because by the age of 5, the story is already being written. Early childhood development is not just a warm-up act for education; it is the foundation. It shapes whether a child will thrive in school, feel confident in life, and ultimately find their place in society.
Andreas Schleicher is also a columnist for Teacher, and this month he wrote about designing safe AI systems for education. In the piece, he touches on the importance of age-appropriate guardrails, data protection and human judgement to ensure GenAI becomes a scaffold for learning, not a crutch. He also explores the risk of skill atrophy and understanding student preparedness and capabilities. The last paragraph of his piece has really stuck has with me. Here’s what he said:
And above all, we must be clear about authority. GenAI should assist professional judgement, not replace it. The moment we allow machines to make high-stakes educational decisions on their own, we don’t just automate, we abdicate. Strong guardrails early. Growing autonomy over time. Human judgement always in charge.
Another columnist we heard from this month is Professor Martin Westwell, Chief Executive of the South Australian Department for Education. In the piece, Martin discusses the book Students, Students, Students! by Dr Iwan Syahril, who has been at the centre of one of the most ambitious education reforms in the world over in Indonesia. He runs through the main themes and ideas explored in the book – one being that transformation does not live in the blueprint. It lives in people. I really liked how Martin reflected on this idea. Here’s what he said:
For teachers, this is both obvious and profound. A curriculum document matters, but it does not interpret a puzzled look, repair a relationship, adjust an explanation, or notice that a student who appears disengaged is actually protecting themselves from failure. That work depends on professional judgement.
I’ll leave you with a question Martin poses himself for Teacher readers to consider. Here is what he wrote: For teachers, the value of the ideas in the book is not that Indonesia offers a model to copy, but that it asks a question every system must answer: what would change if students were genuinely the organising principle of our work?
Finally, in our latest podcast episode we heard from ACER’s Dr Dan Edwards who shared his insights on the future of assessment. Assessment is a topic respondents to our annual reader survey told us they wanted more content and support on. It's also an area that's constantly evolving and innovating, so there was plenty to talk about. Of course, I had to ask him about AI and what’s emerging in terms of AI and assessment. Here’s what Dan had to say on that:
One of the things that comes to mind immediately for me is again around the reporting aspect and how can we provide that information, the insights back to teachers in a personalised and quick way so that they can see what the next steps might be or they can use as a tool, alongside their own judgement, as to what the next steps might be in the teaching of individuals or teaching of classes? So, I think that there could be quite a lot of interesting gains in using AI in that way.
I’ll leave you with that quote from Dan. Thanks for listening. I’ll leave the links to the full articles and podcast episodes I mentioned today in the transcript of this podcast, which you can find under the podcast tab at our website, teachermagazine.com. We’ll be back with a new episode very soon.
Teacher magazine is published by the Australian Council for Educational Research.
