Short articles

Planning ahead to meet the professional learning needs of staff to improve teaching effectiveness in your school is an important aspect of a principal’s work. But, what happens when these plans get overtaken by events?

Russell Vale Public School recently commissioned a local artist to revamp buildings in the school grounds. Here, Principal Paul Cuthbertson shares why the school decided to commission the work, and why it was important to depict local wildlife.

‘While we found that a lot of elements in our lives can be replaced by an online substitute, after a year of lockdowns we still have not been able to replicate the “human” element. The lack of peer-to-peer interaction was perhaps felt most by children.’ Professor John Toumbourou discusses the role of peer support programs in rebuilding student resilience.

Teachers play an important role in the mitigation of bullying, particularly in the early years, where children are more likely to rely on their teachers to help them fix their problems. So, as an early years educator, how do you approach assessing behaviour to decide whether it is bullying?

Translating academic research into classroom practice is traditionally a one-way relationship – from research to practice. University of Queensland colleagues Stephanie MacMahon, Jack Leggett and Annemaree Carroll share details of a collaboration with educators making it a two-way process of engagement.

Learning to read is a complex task for children, and there are many evidence-based approaches to teaching children to read. So, how do children learn to read? How can teachers be most successful in reading instruction? We share five resources which seek to answer these questions.

Registrations are now open for this year’s Australian STEM Video Game Challenge. Students are encouraged to design creative, engaging and imaginative video games incorporating the 2021 theme, ‘scale’.

In this series, we take a look at some further readings available on a particular topic, including open access research papers from various online databases. In this edition, the focus is on student resilience.

A systematic review of research from the past two decades has investigated the link between leadership and learning to analyse how principals affect student learning and overall school culture. Here, we look at the skills displayed by principals that have emerged to have a positive effect on schools.

‘One of the biggest challenges facing educators is to find better ways to meet the learning needs of the many students who fall behind in our schools.’ In her latest Teacher column, Dr Sue Thomson explores the issue in an Australian context, and the progress made in recent years.