Collaboration

A blob trying to break into the Underworld, a scientist jumping through size-altering portals, and a man who wakes up dazed and confused in a scrapyard – these are some of the protagonists from winning games in this year’s Australian STEM Video Game Challenge.

Bernie Hawker, Head of Department Teaching and Learning at Goondiwindi State High School in Queensland, joins us to talk about the school’s award-winning STEAM Program, which has been successful in improving student writing outcomes. You’ll also hear about the strong culture of sharing and collaboration among staff, including through Professional Learning Communities, that’s been key to the program’s continued growth and success.

Who was the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) of women’s tennis in 2018? Teams participating in this year’s International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IM2C) were tasked with developing and applying a model to determine just that.

In this Teaching Methods episode, we speak to education consultant Michael Minas about a study he conducted to measure primary school students’ attitudes towards completing challenging problem solving tasks in maths. Michael shares details of the lesson structure he utilised, and why students responded to it so positively.

Registrations are now open for this year’s Australian STEM Video Game Challenge. Students are encouraged to design creative, engaging and imaginative video games incorporating the 2021 theme, ‘scale’.

Considerable progress has been made in defining 21st Century skills, but curriculum implementation is the next hurdle. That was one of the messages to come out of the first webinar revisiting the ‘big five’ education challenges facing Australian schools.

In this Q&A we speak with Dr Katie Richardson about looking at student assessment data from different angles, identifying patterns in data, and why working collaboratively to interpret assessment data is a useful technique.

Proficiency in critical and creative thinking, collaboration and problem solving helps students succeed in their learning, but these kinds of skills are also highly valued by employers.

In this episode of Teacher Staffroom, we discuss the contributions we’ve published on Teacher this month, including a piece on collaborative reflective practice, and another on developmental rubrics improving student learning. We also share some highlights from our latest podcast episodes.

The Collaborative and Reflective Practices Program at Brisbane’s Villanova College aims to improve teaching practice by bringing teachers together, to allow them to collaborate and discuss the impact they have on their students, and implement new strategies with the support of their peers.