School leaders

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?

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.

The Knox School has been working with academics to research what teachers learned from the lockdown experience. In this final article of a three-part series, middle leader Melodie Matheson shares how teacher wellbeing became a transformative influence on her leadership.

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.

In the final installment of our three-part series on small group tutoring, we discuss what effective small group tutoring looks like in practice, the importance of building relationships with students, and why students need to be at the centre of this work.

Teacher caught up with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, to talk about how schools have coped with the challenges of 2020. In this video, he shares how different countries around the world ensured teaching and learning continued during COVID-19.

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 contributes to a teacher’s decision to leave the profession? And, at the same time, why do others thrive and find success and personal fulfillment at work? Hugh Gundlach is a researcher, pre-service teacher educator and classroom teacher, and he joins us today to discuss his research on teacher attrition and retention.

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.