In today’s article, we speak with the winners of the Teacher Awards 2023 in the Excellence in Staff Collaboration category. Bernadette Hawker and Brett Hallett from Goondiwindi State High School in Queensland share how staff work collaboratively across faculty areas to improve student writing outcomes in all year levels and subject areas.

School Assembly is the podcast that explores what it’s like to build a school from the ground up. Principal Jo Camozzato has been busy building her team of teachers, leaders and support staff at Bemin Secondary College in Melbourne, which opens for the 2024 school year. So, in this episode we’ll be chatting about recruitment in a time of teacher shortages.

How many scientists are mentioned in high school science curricula in Australia and how many are women? After discovering that Marie Curie was absent from the radioactivity section of a state Physics syllabus, astrophysicist Dr Kathryn Ross set out to explore if the contributions of other women were being overlooked. She joins us on this episode to share the shocking findings.

The design and implementation of a new whole-school or subject specific curriculum is a big undertaking, and relies on collaboration, consultation, monitoring and evaluation. In today’s article, we catch up with the winning team of the Teacher Awards 2023 in the Excellence in Curriculum Design and Implementation category.

A common goal for all schools is to continually improve practice and lift student outcomes. Precisely how leaders respond to this complex challenge is impacted by many internal and external contextual factors, including student needs and the expertise of the principal, teachers and support staff.

In this edition of Researching education: 5 further readings, we’re sharing 5 pieces of content on the topic of assessment from researchers in Australia and from overseas. You can read research into the state of assessment literacy of teachers across the globe, and a paper on early years educators’ use of phonological awareness assessment practices.

‘Addressing the gender imbalance in digital technologies education and careers is an important goal. The research highlighted several areas where educators can contribute.’ Research from ACER for CSIRO has identified several factors that could support greater engagement of young women in digital technologies education. Find out more in this article.

So far in a 3-part series on teacher planning, educational leader Michael Rosenbrock has looked at how teachers can pro-actively plan to tackle student misconceptions in STEM and support them to build and use their vocabulary in science and mathematics. In this final article, he explores how teachers can best plan to make effective use of manipulatives and representations to help students build understanding.

In our latest expert Q&A we talk to Kristy Osborne, a physicist, former pre-service teacher and Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) about the science concepts that primary students struggle with and why it’s important for teachers to identify and address student misconceptions early on.

‘Deliberately planning to support students to build and use their vocabulary is critical to ensuring that students can both access the curriculum content and effectively demonstrate their understanding.’ Educational leader Michael Rosenbrock shares what this might look like in practice for maths and science teachers.