The fourth topic in a series revisiting the ‘big five’ challenges in Australian education asks what progress has been made towards ensuring all children get off to the best start in life. Ahead of their webinar this week, expert panellists Dr Dan Cloney, Myra Geddes and Mary-Ruth Mendel give Teacher readers an overview of what they’ll be discussing.

Casual relief teachers (CRTs) are an integral part of the teacher workforce, but many often report feeling a lack of support and exclusion at schools they’re working in. Recent research has uncovered the common challenges faced by CRTs, and how school leaders can mitigate these concerns. Find out more in this podcast episode.

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?

A review by researchers at the Telethon Kids Institute into different approaches over the last decade to improving student wellbeing has highlighted six key learnings to help drive decision-making in schools. Find out more about the recommendations and other findings from the review in today’s article.

The architecture and landscape design of the Mary Rice Early Learning Centre in Brisbane provides opportunities for children to experiment, discover, create and explore. In today’s article we speak to an educator and the architects who worked on the project to hear more about how the design of the centre facilitates learning and play.

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.

How are teachers and school leaders accessing and using research and evidence? What challenges do they face when doing so? And, what enables quality use of research and evidence? Members of the research team for the Monash Q Project join us in today’s episode to explore these questions.

In their new book In Teachers We Trust: The Finnish Way to World-Class Schools, Pasi Sahlberg and Timothy D Walker suggest seven key principles for building a culture of trust in schools. This exclusive extract discussing the ‘three levels of trust’ is taken from a chapter on cultivating responsible learners.

Jeanette Denham, a passionate secondary and primary teacher who works part-time at Ravensthorpe District High School in Western Australia, has penned a review of Pip Williams’ new book, The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a group of stress symptoms that can develop after one (or sometimes more than one) traumatic event. Dr Joanne Beames, from the Black Dog Institute, joins us today to discuss the signs and symptoms of PTSD, how prevalent it is in society, and explain ways people experiencing it can find help and support.