The International Mathematical Modeling Challenge asks students to work collaboratively on a mathematical task related to the real world. Here, Ross Turner, who leads Australia’s involvement in the challenge, describes this year’s task.

An international mathematical modelling competition, open to secondary students in Australia, has seen senior secondary students work collaboratively on a complex, real-world mathematics problem. Here, we speak to two teachers who guided students through the competition.

The introduction of the Learning Specialist role, as part of the Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2017, has allowed experienced teachers to support colleagues to improve their practice, while still being able to remain in the classroom. In today’s reader submission, Nicole Kelly, a Learning Specialist at Ararat Primary School in Victoria, shares her experience.

Professor Geoff Masters discusses several practices that he would advance are part of the generic ‘essence’ of effective teaching.

A new research-based series encourages early years educators to take advantage of everyday teaching and learning opportunities to improve young children’s scientific understanding, and shares four step-by-step activities for the classroom or learning at home.

In the second of two articles, Kate Coleman and Abbey MacDonald explore some of the resources to eventuate from the creative pressure cooker circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdown, and how they can be used to maximise studio time and learning into the future.

‘In this home-supported learning environment parents are being called upon to play a broader role in their children’s education. The role of the parent is not to replace the teacher in learning from home …’ Dr Tanya Vaughan and Susannah Schoeffel share evidence on how teachers can work with parents to support students in a rapidly changing education landscape.

Are today’s students ‘digital natives’? Have digital technologies transformed classroom practice? ACER Research Director Julian Fraillon looks to Australian and international data to explore some of the myths and realities related to digital literacy and how these should be considered in the new paradigm of working from home.

One teacher from Australia has been named alongside educators from 37 other countries in the top 50 shortlist for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize 2020. Here, we look at the work she’s doing in her school.

Professor Paul Caldarella joins Teacher to discuss his three-year project that looked at the relationship between the praise-to-reprimand ratios and the extent to which students focused on class activities.