Short articles

Music Teacher and Deputy Principal Sarah Donnelley was named winner of the Telstra ARIA Music Teacher Award last term for the impact she has had on students at Wilcannia Central School through her use of music as a tool for engagement, and her creativity during periods of remote teaching and learning.

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.

Professor Geoff Masters AO shares details of a special ACER five-webinar series, where expert practitioners, researchers and policymakers will revisit the major challenges in school education he wrote of six years ago, and ask what progress has been made on each, and what needs to happen next.

Data consistently shows that students are dealing with high levels of stress and other mental health issues, and that many choose to turn to their teachers for support with these struggles. A new report published in the Australian Journal of Education (AJE) looks at how teachers manage student wellbeing concerns and academic stress.

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.

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.

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. This three-part reader submission looks at key areas of change, starting with teacher agency.

Research indicates that Indigenous children’s participation in organised sport leads to an increase of two to seven months’ learning in numeracy. Here, we look at the findings and the implications of this research for closing the learning gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

Why is language development so important in the early years? What does optimal language development look like? In this edition of Researching education: Five further readings, we share five resources which investigate the development of oral language in the early years.

After the disruption caused to schooling throughout 2020, students might be feeling a bit different about the return to school this year. Here, we speak to Associate Professor Dr Anne Coffey about how to best support students transition into the new school year, and what to be mindful of.