Professional learning

Each year in our reader survey, we ask you: ‘looking back on your experience as an educator, if you could share one piece of advice with your peers, what would it be?’ In this infographic, we take a look at some of your responses on the topic of professional development.

All Australian schools and school leaders are currently managing change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even under ‘normal’ circumstances, change is a difficult process to lead. How can schools implement effectively and efficiently, to support student learning in such unprecedented times?

At Pakuranga College in Auckland, New Zealand, gathering data and using evidence-based resources is the basis of their professional development. Here, Deputy Principal Larraine Barton shares how a Teacher magazine podcast informed part of the beginner teacher program at the school.

Melanie Macmillan, Principal of Warwick Farm Public School, shares how her experience in The Principals’ Centre in Australia: Leadership for School Excellence program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education strengthened her professionally as a school leader, but it also helped her to understand how she could better support the needs of families at her school.

This month has been has been one characterised by a lot of fear and uncertainty as the world grapples with the challenge of containing the spread of the coronavirus. In this episode of Teacher Staffroom, we do a round-up of what we’ve published so far related to Covid-19, as well as other more general content that we thought would be of interest.

‘While schools will be gradually re-opening in China by mid-April, they’re closing around much of the rest of the world. How well are we prepared? OECD’s TALIS survey offers some insights,’ Andreas Schleicher, the organisation’s Director for Education and Skills, writes in his latest Teacher column.

Nine out of 10 teachers from OECD countries and economies are satisfied with their job, but only 26 per cent of them think the work they do is valued by society, according to the latest figures to come from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) report released overnight.

St Helena Secondary College in Victoria embarked on a journey to improve the quality and accuracy of teacher judgements on their student reports, in order to better reflect student achievement. We’re joined by Kate Williams to hear about the process and where they’re at on their journey.

Teachers and school leaders spend considerable effort and time writing and checking student reports, but how effective are they in communicating student learning? We speak to principal Anthony Hockey about what he found when considering this question in his school context.

Assumption College in Kilmore has been implementing a curriculum reform initiative called ‘myMAP’ for the beginning of the 2020 school year. In today’s Q&A, Vaughan Cleary, Deputy Principal of Learning and Teaching, explains how it works in practice and supports students on their individual learning journeys.