What should Australian schools and teachers focus on in order to improve students’ general understanding of mathematics and science? In her final Teacher column of the year, Dr Sue Thomson explores newly released TIMSS 2019 data to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of Australian students at the national level.

Andreas Schleicher – Director for Education and Skills at the OECD and long-time Teacher columnist – joins us from Paris for this episode to give his take on all things 2020, talk about the longer term impacts of the school shutdowns and share how different education systems have responded to the pandemic restrictions.

The annual Global Teacher Prize has been awarded for 2020. Ranjitsinh Disale, a primary school teacher in India who has transformed education for girls in his community, has been named winner of the US $1 million award. Here, we look at how he’s improving learning at his school.

Australian students have performed significantly better in the latest cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in Year 8 mathematics and Year 4 and Year 8 science – but not in Year 4 mathematics – than they did in 2015. Here, we take a closer look at the results.

One-to-one and small-group tutoring have emerged as a catch-up strategy for schools to address student learning gaps as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with government funded programs announced here in Australia and overseas. Dr Pauline Ho and Dr Tanya Vaughan look at the evidence and give five key takeaways for school leaders and teachers.

In this monthly series, we take a look at some further readings available on a particular topic, including open access research papers from various online catalogues. This month’s theme is science education.

In Strong Foundations: Evidence informing practice in early childhood education and care, Associate Professor Anna Kilderry and Honorary Professor Bridie Raban lead a team of 34 contributors, sharing knowledge and insights from research and links to everyday practice. This exclusive extract for Teacher readers discusses the ‘Principles of quality assessment’.

Researchers at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales have been working with teachers and school leaders around Australia to better understand what motivates them to be involved in school-university partnerships. Here they share some of their study findings.

You might’ve noticed we’ve been placing a real emphasis on wellbeing at Teacher recently. We’ve looked at new research into student wellbeing, resilience, and launched a new publication dedicated to educator wellbeing outside of the classroom. In today’s podcast we take you through anything you might have missed.

You and your students may have access to lots of technology in your classroom, but are you making the most of it? The Digital Pedagogies Lighthouse Project at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School has seen staff make the shift from using tech tools for productivity and presentations to embedding them in authentic mathematics learning.