Student welfare

Age-appropriate consent education will be mandatory in all Australian schools from 2023. Kit and Arlo Find a Way: Teaching consent to 8-12 year olds is a fictional chapter book created for use in primary classrooms. In the first instalment of a two-part Q&A with author-educators Ingrid Laguna and Vanessa Hamilton, we find out more about the resource and research about the impact of consent education in schools.

How have things changed for schools over the last two years of the pandemic, and what are the improvement priorities now for teachers, principals and communities on the ground? Professor Pauline Taylor-Guy joins us for the latest episode in our School Improvement podcast series.

As a primary school teacher, are you aware of how many students in your class are finishing their lunch each day? How many are taking food back home? New Australian research has found that most primary school students have just 10 minutes to eat their lunch during the school day. Find out more in today’s article.

Our guest for this episode of School Improvement is Judith Weir, Principal of Our Lady of Mercy College (OLMC) Heidelberg. We caught up with her at the start of the school year here in Australia, to talk about leadership, strategic planning, how to balance competing priorities, the impact of COVID on student wellbeing and the importance of professional mentoring.

As a teacher, how can you best manage when a student in your classroom makes an inappropriate comment in the middle of a lesson, catching you off-guard and disrupting other students? What about when this happens in the playground? What if the comment is offensive? We unpack these questions in-depth with researchers Dr Erin Leif and Russell Fox.

A majority of teachers have now had experience with online teaching thanks to the pandemic. But, what can we learn from schools who were teaching online long before COVID-19 restrictions? Jeremy Kwok and Su Temlett from Australian Christian College join Teacher to share the advantages.

Our guest on episode 72 of The Research Files is Professor Joseph Ciarrochi from Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education. He’s the lead researcher for projectHOPE – a program that’s notched up success in re-engaging at-risk secondary students with their schooling.

Coping with stress, mental health, and school and study problems were the top three concerns of young people last year, according to the most recent findings from a large study. In this Q&A, two of the report’s co-authors explain how educators can support their students in these areas.

Forums held with students in Years 6, 7 and 8 in Australia on the topic of starting high school have shed light on what concerns them the most about the transition process, and what has been helpful to them along the way. Here, we share some comments from the students.

In this special podcast episode, we’ve gathered a panel of experienced teachers and leaders, who will be sharing their priorities, strategies and tips for the first few weeks of term and for a successful year. Topics include classroom displays, professional learning and positive behaviour management.