Feedback

In his first video for the new school year, Greg Whitby sits down with Renee Blyth from Xavier College in Llandilo, western Sydney, to discuss how staff have maintained a culture of continuous change at the school.

What would happen if you listened to your staff and students about what their reality is like, and then wrote a school-wide wellbeing framework and curriculum that responded specifically to their needs? At Indie School Elizabeth in South Australia, a targeted approach to addressing the complex wellbeing needs of students led to a brave reimagining of staff wellbeing strategies and processes.

Pamela Macklin and Vic Zbar have just released an updated second edition of Driving School Improvement: Practical strategies and tools. In this Q&A they discuss a common improvement challenge faced by leaders, and share examples of how different schools are meeting this challenge.

What do you understand by the term ‘leadership’? Who do you consider to be a good leader and what are the attributes that make them so? Researchers asked Middle Years school students in Australia these questions. Find out what they said in today’s article.

‘While it will take us some time before we understand the full effect of temporary school closures on student learning long term, we’ve (in the meantime) learnt some important things to inform our teaching practices going forward.’

‘Implementation is a process not an event’ became a cornerstone phrase for Liam Stakelum as he led change within Marist College Canberra. With co-authors Dr Tanya Vaughan and Susannah Schoeffel he discusses the vision for change, the move from evidence to practice and the implementation process.

The emerging definition of ‘student voice’ involves young people in a true partnership with adults, so they can influence what happens to them in school, and become meaningfully involved in their own learning. In today’s article Roger Holdsworth from the Youth Research Centre at The University of Melbourne discusses how the definition has evolved since it first emerged in the 1980s.

‘In a year that has seen a great deal of disruption to classes, the relationship between students and their teachers has become far more important.’ In her new column, Dr Sue Thomson explores the latest report from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and offers insights into how Australian students perceive their teachers.

‘Students’ questions made it apparent that they were still confused about the next steps in their learning. … Why didn’t they value the feedback?’ In today’s article, Head Teacher at Al-Faisal College Omar Jamal shares how developmental rubrics have improved student learning.

‘Feedback is identified as one of the most powerful strategies to progress student learning.’ Today’s article explores the nature and impact of high quality feedback, and shares how one school’s focus on teacher feedback on students’ writing is driving real change and improving outcomes.