ACER’s Research Conference brings together leading education researchers from Australia and overseas. In today’s article, Professor Geoff Masters AO discusses the aims of the conference and this year’s theme – ‘Teaching practices that make a difference: Insights from research’.

Dr John Halsey joins Teacher for this episode of The Research Files. His final report on the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education here in Australia explores the key issues, challenges and barriers affecting student learning outcomes and suggests four priority areas for action.

Students who have parents deployed to a war zone are more vulnerable to a range of psychological, emotional and social issues. A new report published in the Australian Journal of Education looks at the processes employed by schools to support these children.

Associate Professor Lynn Barnett-Morris joins Teacher to discuss her longitudinal study The education of playful boys: class clowns in the classroom. For the last three years she’s been researching Kindergarten-aged children to determine how playfulness in the classroom is viewed by the children themselves, their classmates and their teachers.

The Australian Sports Commission (ASC) released a report that found that 40 per cent of high school students in Australia have not participated in any organised sport in the past 12 months. Here, we look at what the report says may prevent students from being active.

In a recent Teacher article, two schools discussed their differing policies on mobile phone use during school hours. Here, we look at a range of studies that have explored the positives and negatives of allowing mobile phones to be used in class.

Can being confused actually be a beneficial part of the learning process? And in what ways can teachers allow for more uncertainty in their classrooms? These are questions being explored by researchers at the Science of Learning Research Centre.

School leadership is an increasingly complex role and research suggests the demands certainly take their toll on the health and wellbeing of principals. Associate Professor Philip Riley joins The Research Files to discuss the latest findings of the Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety & Wellbeing Survey.

In the first of a series of articles on how schools communicate student learning progress, Dr Hilary Hollingsworth and Jonathan Heard examine some of the recent history of reporting in Australian schools and highlight some of the competing forces that have influenced current practices in student reporting.

In the 2017 Youth Survey conducted by Mission Australia, respondents were asked how troubled they are by a series of topics. Here are some of the results, which show a particular struggle with mental health.