Long reads

The findings of Australia’s annual snapshot of principal health and wellbeing have just been released. And, if you’re an educator you won’t be surprised to hear that ‘extremely long hours and constant exposure to stress’ left school leaders exhausted in 2020, as first fires, then floods, then a pandemic pushed them to their limits.

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.

Reducing the disparities in the schooling experiences of students was one of the issues identified by Teacher columnist Professor Geoff Masters AO in his influential series on the ‘big five’ education challenges facing Australian schools. What does the latest evidence say, and where do we go to from here?

Our connections with others have an influence on our own behaviour. Social networks form in lots of different contexts, including at school and in the workplace. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is now offering insights into these important, but often invisible relationships.

In a recent Teacher article, Learning Specialist Jeanette Breen shared how Templestowe Heights Primary School (THPS) in Victoria has improved its writing moderation process. Here she describes a new step that aims to bridge the gaps that still exist for staff, through an assessment process known as comparative judgement.

The Knox School has worked with Monash University to research what teachers would like to take forward (and leave behind) from the remote learning experience. Three key areas of change were identified. This second article in a series focuses on school community collaboration.

‘Equity demands a curriculum responsive to individual needs, not blind equality.’ In his new Teacher column, Professor Geoff Masters AO highlights the important difference between equality and equity in education.

Small group tutoring has emerged as a key strategy to support students who fell behind in 2020 during remote schooling. In today’s article, we explore how to choose a tutor to best suit your students’ learning needs, the professional learning offered to tutors, and why a collaborative relationship between the classroom teacher and tutor teacher is critically important.

‘In the context of remote learning, it is likely that those students who had already developed metacognitive strategies and skills were better prepared to learn and apply that learning independently.’ Today’s article shares how a senior secondary school is developing metacognition and self-regulation in learners.

Students in Australia and across the world faced disruptions to their learning in 2020 as they moved to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Small group tutoring has emerged as a strategy to support those students who’ve fallen behind. In today’s article we explore how to identify these students and why school leaders have a critical role in co-designing the programs.