We’re right at the beginning of a new school year here in Australia. That means most of you are busy setting up your classrooms, meeting new students and establishing relationships with them and their families. In today’s podcast special, we’ve spoken with several winners from last year’s Teacher Awards to ask them their most valuable tips, strategies and priorities for starting the school year off right.

The Culturally Nourishing Schooling project aims to champion Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural inclusion and genuine long-term engagement in First Nations communities across New South Wales. In today’s article we speak to Julia Dimitriadis from Matraville Sports High School about how the program has helped her to feel more confident to incorporate Indigenous knowledges and cultures in her classroom.

Did the COVID-19 pandemic affect public perceptions of teachers and the teaching profession, and how were their views and beliefs influenced by media coverage? Researchers in the UK have been exploring these questions, and their findings offer some interesting insights into how society values the profession, and the impact this has on teacher mental health and wellbeing.

How can we support the teaching and learning of mathematics in ways that can enhance student engagement, participation and thus learning? In this reader submission, David Chinofunga shares findings from a 3-year study he’s been leading at James Cook University focused on supporting the teaching and learning of maths in Queensland secondary schools.

In our first reader submission of the new year, Dr Rebecca J Collie shares findings from her latest study showing the link between teacher motivation, wellbeing and retention, and how this can help school leaders support staff.

Teacher dips into the pages of Leading Professional Conversations: Adaptive expertise for schools, the new book from Emeritus Professor Helen Timperley. This exclusive extract discusses the importance of firstly establishing the purpose and focus of the conversation, and some things to think about before diving in.

Artificial Intelligence is now a hot topic in teaching and learning. For the last 3 years, Digital Technologies teacher Jo Rea has been developing an AI ethical inquiry unit for year 5 students to help them build their ethical understanding of different AI tools and technologies. Here she shares the phases, classroom activities and student responses.

In this expert Q&A, Lisa De Bortoli – ACER Senior Research Fellow and National Project Manager for Australia for PISA – explains what the latest test results tell us about students’ skills and knowledge, and how schools can use the data to inform teaching and learning. She also shares early findings from PISA’s student and principal questionnaires.

Our ninth annual reader survey recently concluded and in it, we invited you to share a piece of advice you'd give to a fellow educator. Here are some of your responses on the topic of continuous learning.

It’s time for our annual podcast highlights episode for 2023! The editorial team at Teacher have selected some of our favourite episodes of the year, across a range of different series, and will be chatting about why we enjoyed them and why they resonated with our audience so much.