Six years ago Professor Geoff Masters AO penned a column for Teacher on the ‘big five’ education challenges facing Australian schools. This year, ACER has been running a five-part webinar series exploring each challenge in greater detail, and in today’s podcast, we run you through some of the highlights.

Being a school principal can be isolating, but principals who participate in mentoring gain access to support from a trusted peer who has a first-hand understanding of the unique aspects of the role. Here, we speak to Linda Mitchell, Principal of Fitzroy High School in Victoria, about what she’s gained by having a mentor.

Staff at Bowen Road Primary School have been working with a local electrical engineer for a few years now to teach students about coding. In this podcast, we speak with educator Lynne Hanlon and electrical engineer Robbie Bell about how the partnership is broadening students’ understanding of careers in STEM.

Staff at Cedar College in South Australia are determined to improve the proportion of female students choosing to study Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STEM) subjects in senior high school. Here, we speak with Digital Technologies and Maths teacher Trudi Wynn about the strategies they’ve employed to entice more girls to consider studying STEM.

Reducing the disparities in the schooling experiences of students was one of the issues identified by Teacher columnist Professor Geoff Masters AO in his influential series on the ‘big five’ education challenges facing Australian schools. What does the latest evidence say, and where do we go to from here?

A study has followed primary school teachers through an entire school year to document how they taught mathematics to be inclusive of children with Down syndrome. The findings have been published in the Mathematics Education Research Journal, and in today’s podcast we find out more from the report’s co-author, Associate Professor Rhonda Faragher.

What would happen if you listened to your staff and students about what their reality is like, and then wrote a school-wide wellbeing framework and curriculum that responded specifically to their needs? At Indie School Elizabeth in South Australia, a targeted approach to addressing the complex wellbeing needs of students led to a brave reimagining of staff wellbeing strategies and processes.

How can teachers go about identifying the underlying causes of a student’s behaviour, and then approach responding to this behaviour in a respectful and effective way? To dissect these questions, we’re joined by Dr Erin Leif and Russell Fox from Monash University.

The Knox School has worked with Monash University to research what teachers would like to take forward (and leave behind) from the remote learning experience. This three-part reader submission looks at key areas of change, starting with teacher agency.

What contributes to a teacher’s decision to leave the profession? And, at the same time, why do others thrive and find success and personal fulfillment at work? Hugh Gundlach is a researcher, pre-service teacher educator and classroom teacher, and he joins us today to discuss his research on teacher attrition and retention.