Long reads

In the latest episode of our podcast series, The Research Files, we spoke with Dr Kathryn Ross about the gender bias evident in Australian high school science curricula. In this article, we speak with primary school STEM teacher Megan Hayes about how she ensures her students learn about the contributions of Australian female scientists in order to improve girls’ participation in STEM.

The winners of the 2023 Teacher Awards have been announced. In today’s article, we speak with the winner of the Fostering Strong School-Community Partnerships Award, Rubina Shaheen Nawabi from Noble Park English Language School in Victoria.

The design and implementation of a new whole-school or subject specific curriculum is a big undertaking, and relies on collaboration, consultation, monitoring and evaluation. In today’s article, we catch up with the winning team of the Teacher Awards 2023 in the Excellence in Curriculum Design and Implementation category.

End of year exams and assessments, particularly for senior school students, can be a time of heightened stress for many. Linda Williams – Senior Psychologist and Clinical Lead at youth mental health service ReachOut – shares new survey findings on students’ exam stress, and how teachers can continue to help them through this difficult period.

A common goal for all schools is to continually improve practice and lift student outcomes. Precisely how leaders respond to this complex challenge is impacted by many internal and external contextual factors, including student needs and the expertise of the principal, teachers and support staff.

So far in a 3-part series on teacher planning, educational leader Michael Rosenbrock has looked at how teachers can pro-actively plan to tackle student misconceptions in STEM and support them to build and use their vocabulary in science and mathematics. In this final article, he explores how teachers can best plan to make effective use of manipulatives and representations to help students build understanding.

In our latest expert Q&A we talk to Kristy Osborne, a physicist, former pre-service teacher and Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) about the science concepts that primary students struggle with and why it’s important for teachers to identify and address student misconceptions early on.

‘Deliberately planning to support students to build and use their vocabulary is critical to ensuring that students can both access the curriculum content and effectively demonstrate their understanding.’ Educational leader Michael Rosenbrock shares what this might look like in practice for maths and science teachers.

‘Teacher knowledge of misconceptions and explicitly planning to uncover and address them is vital for supporting student learning growth.’ Educational leader Michael Rosenbrock looks at how teachers can pro-actively plan to tackle student misconceptions in STEM, and steps though an example from the forces and motion topic in physics.

In today’s article we share an update on the Pathways, Engagement and Transitions study, which explores the post-school pathways of young people experiencing disadvantage and how this information can be used to create better support systems, including in school settings.