Evidence-based practice

It’s a special, bumper episode of School Assembly as Teacher Editor Jo Earp chats to Dan McShea about setting the teaching direction, and also checks in on Ray Boyd and Rachael Lehr, who we followed in Series 1, and Series 2 principal Jo Camozatto to find out what’s been happening at their schools.

In this Q&A, we speak to Kirsten Hodgson and Bryan Kilkenny from St Monica’s College about their approach to explicit instruction, how they use professional learning to support staff in shifting their practice, and what they’ve learned from visiting other schools that have undertaken a similar journey.

We’re joined by Professor David Hopkins ahead of his keynote at ACER’s Research Conference 2025, titled ‘Unleashing Greatness – A Strategy for School Improvement’. Our conversation zeros in on one of the 8 steps of his strategy, instructional leadership, and includes practical pointers and plenty to reflect on in relation to your own context and practice.

High quality implementation of educational approaches can have a significant impact on improving students' outcomes. But when it comes to implementing a new approach, how can schools ensure it’s being done effectively? We speak with AERO’s Kate Griffiths.

Teachers at Queensland’s Balmoral State High School have been working with academics to carry out action research into student use of AI tools and their motivation for doing so. In today’s reader submission, Georgia Wignall and Emma Hart share findings from a literature review and student survey.

Rising teacher shortages and a global pandemic are just 2 of the major challenges schools have had to navigate over the last few years. Despite this, the latest PISA report highlights a handful of education systems that showed resilience during this period – including Japan and Lithuania. Teacher finds out more.

In this episode of School Improvement Editor Jo Earp is joined by Jake Compton, Director of Academic Culture and a teacher in the Senior School at Canterbury College, which has been working with academics at the UQ Learning Lab since 2020. We’ll be talking about some of the projects, how they’ve evolved over the years, and the challenges along the way.

Highly effective schools enhance student outcomes by fostering strong 2-way partnerships. In this podcast Dominique Russell is joined by Lesley Johnson from Trinity College in Adelaide, and Simon Leonard from the University of South Australia to discuss the success of their partnership that has been ongoing since 2017, including how it’s improving practice for both school and university staff.

‘Increasingly, schools will need to support their young people to not just develop content knowledge and skills through effective learning, but also ensure their students know how to learn, individually and with others.’ Today’s article shares how the UQ Learning Lab is helping educators to set their students up for success at school and in life.

In the final episode of our 3-part miniseries on world-class learning systems, Jo Earp and Professor Geoff Masters discuss how schools and communities in British Columbia, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong and South Korea are working together to best meet individual student learning and wellbeing needs.