Research news

Professor Geoff Masters, CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Research, joins Teacher for a series on world-class learning systems. In Episode 1, we find out more about the 5 systems he’s been exploring for a multi-year study commissioned by the National Centre on Education and the Economy in Washington DC.

Looking at the content of students’ stories can give teachers an indication of what they’re interested in, as well as the issues that may be impacting their lives. Each year, Oxford University Press analyses thousands of short stories written by primary and secondary students to come up with a Children’s Word of the Year.

School absence has an impact on student outcomes, so being aware of attendance rates for your class, year group, or whole school, and understanding the reasons behind the absence is important. With this information to hand, what will make a difference? That’s the topic of Dr Kirsten Hancock’s research.

Welcome to the first edition of Researching education: 5 further readings for 2024. When we asked you for the topics you’d like us to cover on Teacher in the next 12 months, artificial intelligence (AI) was the most frequently requested. So, in this edition, we’re taking a look at AI.

Did the COVID-19 pandemic affect public perceptions of teachers and the teaching profession, and how were their views and beliefs influenced by media coverage? Researchers in the UK have been exploring these questions, and their findings offer some interesting insights into how society values the profession, and the impact this has on teacher mental health and wellbeing.

In our first reader submission of the new year, Dr Rebecca J Collie shares findings from her latest study showing the link between teacher motivation, wellbeing and retention, and how this can help school leaders support staff.

Students with academic resilience persist and thrive in their studies, despite the odds being stacked against them. In our latest reader submission Associate Professor Nani Tieg, from the University of Oslo, Norway, explores findings from her UNESCO GEM Fellowship study into the role teachers play in fostering academic resilience in maths and science classrooms.

In this expert Q&A, Lisa De Bortoli – ACER Senior Research Fellow and National Project Manager for Australia for PISA – explains what the latest test results tell us about students’ skills and knowledge, and how schools can use the data to inform teaching and learning. She also shares early findings from PISA’s student and principal questionnaires.

Results from PISA 2022 have been released and the data show Australian student performance in maths and reading has been holding steady since 2015, and in science since 2018. However, when looking at the past 20 years, performance has dropped significantly across the board.

The PISA 2022 international results have just been announced. In this special episode we’re joined by Professor Geoff Masters, CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Research, to talk about Australia’s performance, what we could learn from top performer Singapore, and some of the education reforms taking place in other parts of the world.