Short articles

In today’s article, Kate Hill – an Australian teacher from Melbourne who is currently teaching Year 7 and 8 English at Braeburn School in Nairobi, Kenya – gives an international perspective on learning during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that more people have been working from home than ever before, including educators. So as we begin preparing our 2019/2020 tax returns, are there any new things we should be considering when working out what we can and can’t claim for? Teacher spoke to Australian Taxation Office Assistant Commissioner Karen Foat to find out more.

As a Year 8 Advisor at a secondary school in New South Wales, David Williams works with students on their wellbeing and social and emotional development. He uses Teacher magazine to stay informed about the latest research on student welfare.

In the second of two articles, Kate Coleman and Abbey MacDonald explore some of the resources to eventuate from the creative pressure cooker circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdown, and how they can be used to maximise studio time and learning into the future.

‘In school communities we are indeed “all in this together” however, that does not mean one context fits all.’ In today’s article, Dr Helen Street discusses the importance of acknowledging students’ different experiences, the need for positive relationships, and providing opportunities for autonomy and agency.

Many experienced teachers will have had to draw on their knowledge of good classroom practice to navigate the move to remote teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. But for beginner teachers like Savannah Epskamp, starting a teaching career in the middle of the pandemic was a whole unique challenge in itself.

This month’s edition of Researching Education: Five further readings explores early childhood education. We’ve gathered five further readings available on this topic, including open access research papers from various online databases, and Teacher archive content you might not have come across yet.

‘[My former students] were proclaiming that “Station Eleven is becoming real!”.’ Here, Ben Tiffen shares how Emily St John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic novel is an opportunity for teachers to choose a study text drawing on students’ recent experiences.

STEM Education in Primary Classrooms uses research from Australia and New Zealand as a base for exploring how Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics is being integrated into classroom practice. This exclusive extract for Teacher readers shares a case study of a successful STEM club at a Queensland school.

All Australian schools and school leaders are currently managing change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even under ‘normal’ circumstances, change is a difficult process to lead. How can schools implement effectively and efficiently, to support student learning in such unprecedented times?