ACER’s Global Academic Challenge was held for the first time this year and offers higher-performing students in Years 4, 6 and 8 the opportunity to attempt the kinds of questions sat by students in international schools around the world. ACER Senior Research Fellow Frances Eveleigh, who led the development of the challenge, shares some of the insights in this article.

In this episode in our School Improvement series, we hear from Dr Jason Zagami from Griffith University, who shares some of the current challenges and opportunities of computer education in Australian schools, and how teachers can better prepare for future technological advances.

‘Understanding how students construct information from their prior knowledge … allows classroom educators to determine the extent and type of unlearning needed before introducing new, challenging and truthful information.’ Associate Lecturer Justine Grogan shares some of the findings of her research in Indigenous Education.

In her latest Teacher column, Dr Sue Thomson looks ahead to the release of the PIRLS results, including the aims of this international assessment of Year 4 students’ reading skills, and how data for the 2021 cycle were collected during the pandemic.

New research has shown that while the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) increases student enjoyment and presence in a task, when used on its own it does not improve procedural or declarative knowledge when compared to the more traditional learning activity of watching a video.

When writing assessment questions, do you think you are achieving equitable gender representation? Research Fellow at ACER UK, Theodora Ntoka, says assessment questions often promote gender stereotyping, and has five strategies educators can use to avoid this.

‘There is not a set seating plan. Students choose where to sit according to the task, their learning needs and preferences at any point in time.’ In this reader submission, teachers Heath Henwood and Emily Hales share how they transformed a Year 6 classroom from the traditional rows of desk layout to flexible seating.

With the rapid growth in digital technologies, digital writing skills are becoming more and more relevant for students. A new research project from Deakin University will look at the potential to complement traditional writing tasks in schools with contemporary forms of digital writing.

As an educator, how do you approach talking to your students about climate change? Can you identify key gaps in students’ knowledge? How do you manage issues of eco-anxiety and climate grief? In this article, we outline five further readings which explore climate change education in Australia.

Early-career teacher at Tasmanian eSchool, Ruby Lyons-Reid, has recently been recognised for her use of digital resources to engage students in learning about First Nations histories and cultures, and in this article, she shares the learning activities she’s found to have the most impact.