STEM

The Australian space economy is set to triple in size and create another 20,000 jobs by 2030. In this article, we speak to Dr Scott Sleap, the latest recipient of the Park Family Churchill Fellowship, about the work he is doing to inspire young people to consider careers in space.

The latest winners of the annual Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science teaching are George Pantazis from Marble Bar Primary School in Western Australia, and Veena Nair from Viewbank College in Victoria. They both join us in this episode to discuss the work they’ve been recognised for.

Video games are a favourite pastime of both children and adults alike, and schools are therefore using them to engage students in their lessons. This month on Teacher, we published a reader submission that explored how digital gaming motivates Indigenous learners in primary school. In today’s episode, we share highlights from this piece and more.

A new research study is currently being undertaken to investigate the factors that help or stop young female students participating in digital technologies at school. In this article, the research team share their findings so far, and resources for teachers and students.

The 2022 winners of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching have just been announced. In this article, we share the contributions the primary and secondary school teachers are making to Science education.

Year 5 and 6 students from MidCoast Christian College in regional New South Wales were tasked with designing their own video games. We speak with educator Melissa Tindall about the process of designing the games from scratch, and how it allowed students to explore the 21st Century skills of critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication.

We know that, overall, female participation in STEM is lower than that of males, and that schools can play an important part in encouraging girls to pursue education and careers in this area. In this podcast, we’re joined by Jessica Huynh, Managing Director of Go Girl, Go for IT, a free one-day technology conference for girls, and teachers from a school that participated this year.

‘One class was a notable illustration of everything we know about quality in play-based learning.’ In this article, ACER Senior Research Fellow Rachel Parker shares the details of a playful STEM class she witnessed in the United States, where students were engaged in a crime scene investigation activity.

Since 2014, ACER’s STEM Video Game Challenge has invited students to design and build their own video game. In this article, we share the winning games of the 2022 challenge, and former challenge winners share the impact their experience has had on their post-school journey.

In this episode in our Action Research series, we hear from Sarah Durack, a secondary Science and Mathematics teacher based in Sydney. Sarah shares her experience of combining researching part-time with a full-time teaching job, and shares some of the findings from her study on school to university transition.