Name: Teacher’s podcast highlights for 2018 by Teacher Magazine (ACER) in Teacher Magazine
Duration: 18 min 8 s
Description: Welcome to this special end of year edition, where we take a trip down memory lane and select some of our favourite podcast moments from 2018. We’ve actually published 26 episodes this year, including a special to mark our 100th, so it’s been a difficult choice.

Teacher Magazine

My guest today is Professor John Munro, a teacher and a psychologist who has taught and researched in gifted education and talent development for 4 decades. The last time I sat down with John was in January 2020 when we recorded a podcast on gifted education – in particular, how to identify these learners, how to understand their learning needs and how to encourage them to reach their potential in the classroom. 

Five years on, we sat down again here in Melbourne to discuss themes from his new book published by ACER Press, Leading Improvement for Gifted and Talented Students. In particular, we explore leadership for the provision of gifted education – what it takes to develop a vision, putting together an action plan, upskilling teachers and collaborating with the wider community. 

Guest: John Munro
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Sponsor: This podcast from Teacher is supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.

Professor John Munro on leadership for the provision of gifted education

School Assembly is the series where we find out what it takes to build a new school from scratch. We’ve been following Dan McShea from Notre Dame P-12 College on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast since the middle of last year, hearing about the role of Foundation Principal and what it entails – not just in the lead-up to a new school opening, but also the first few months of operation. This is Series 3, and today we’re on Episode 8. So, the topic for this one is policies and processes. Which documents are the responsibility of the Foundation Principal? Is there a template that schools work from? Is it a different procedure for whole-school policies and subject-specific ones? These are just some of the questions we’ll be discussing as Dan gives us a glimpse into the world of strategic planning school leadership. 

School Assembly S3E8: Getting your policies and procedures in place

Late last year, the 2024 recipients of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching were announced. The national Prizes recognise and celebrate the role primary and secondary educators play in inspiring and encouraging students to take up an interest and consider careers in STEM.
 
So for this episode of School Improvement, we had the pleasure of speaking with Alice Leung from Concord High School in New South Wales and Daniel Edwards from Montello Primary School in Tasmania about the work they’ve been recognised for with this Prize. If Daniel Edwards’ name sounds familiar to you, it might be because we spoke with Daniel early last year all about the value of teaching STEM as a subject. Our conversation with Daniel shares some other great insights, such as some favourite learning activities to run in the classroom. 

We also asked Alice to share some of her favourite lesson activities, and we're sure they might be ones you might like to consider working into your lesson planning this year if you’re a secondary science teacher. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guests: Alice Leung and Daniel Edwards


Award-winning science teachers on real-world learning, professional development and lesson ideas

We're really excited to share with you some of the highlights from this month, focusing on the incredible podcast episodes we’ve published on Teacher. Throughout this episode we’ll share some snippets from those recordings, as well as highlight some of the other content that has been popular on the site this month. 

Speaking of popular, some of the older content in our archive proves to be some of the most useful for our readers, as the views on these articles continue to climb each month. If you’re new to Teacher, or perhaps haven’t come across this content yet, we'll point you in the right direction on how to find some of these popular articles, some with more than a quarter of a million views. 

And, like in all Teacher Staffroom episodes, we’ll be posing some questions throughout this podcast, so feel free to pause the audio as you go, gather some colleagues, and discuss together how these stories might be relevant to your school context.
Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Teacher Staffroom Episode 64: Podcasts and popular content

We know the global teacher shortage is impacting many different school contexts, and that encouraging young people to consider a career in teaching is an important part of the long term picture. Dr Tracy Woodroffe joins us to discuss her 12-month research project that gathered perspectives from Aboriginal students and teachers. These perspectives informed recommendations to encourage more Aboriginal young people in the Northern Territory to consider teaching.  
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Dr Tracy Woodroffe

Getting more First Nations teachers into schools

We speak often about the importance of students having an adequate amount of food to help them focus and learn during the school day. But what about teachers? In today’s podcast special, we’re joined by Tammie Jakstas, former teacher and Accredited Practising Dietitian, to hear about her teacher nutrition study.
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Tammie Jakstas

Special: Teacher wellbeing – nutrition tips for during the school day

What made you decide to become a teacher? We’ve been looking at teacher recruitment this month, but perhaps from a different lens that you might think. In this episode, you’ll hear about what young people are saying about teaching as a career, how much schools in Australia are growing year on year, and more.
Host: Dominique Russell
Sponsor: This podcast from Teacher is supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.

Teacher Staffroom Episode 65: Teacher recruitment

There’s so much potential for artificial intelligence and generative AI tools to support teaching and learning, but alongside these exciting opportunities there are challenges and risks. If you’re a teacher or a school leader, you may already be using or experimenting with AI tools – and you certainly won’t be surprised to hear that many of your students definitely are! Our guest for this special episode is Dr Katie Richardson, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research. We’ll be talking about 3 broad areas where AI can enable improvements in education, and what that might look like. Also, what the tools can and can’t do currently, or replace. And we’ll discuss how teachers need to be careful and purposeful in using the different AI tools out there with their students to promote thinking and learning.
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Dr Katie Richardson

Special: AI in teaching and learning

This episode of School Assembly is all about professional learning. Our Series 3 Principal Dan McShea joins us from Queensland's Notre Dame P-12 College to share how it links back to strategic planning and key teaching and learning documents. We'll also find out about his biggest challenge, key learning and proudest achievement since we caught up last. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Dan McShea
Sponsor: Monash University

School Assembly S3E9: Professional learning

Welcome to this special end of year edition, where we take a trip down memory lane and select some of our favourite podcast moments from 2018. We’ve actually published 26 episodes this year, including a special to mark our 100th, so it’s been a difficult choice.

Teacher’s podcast highlights for 2018

Imagine knowing you have a one in 10 chance of winning US $1 million. Well, that’s the reality for Rooty Hill High School teacher Yasodai Selvakumaran. Yasodai has been an educator for the past nine years and has won a slew of awards throughout her career. But this year, she has found herself amongst the top 10 finalists for the 2019 Global Teacher Prize, an award that recognises one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the teaching profession.

Yasodai is a Humanities teacher and a Leader in Professional Practice at her western Sydney school. She’s passionate about her job and the students she works with. She joins us today to talk about her interest in social justice, how she connects with students from different backgrounds and how she uses her lessons to help students to understand the world around them and their place in it. We also discuss her approach to personalised learning plans and how to go about building confidence in students.

Podcast Special: Yasodai Selvakumaran on teaching Humanities

ACER’s Research Conference took place this month with the theme – ‘Preparing students for life in the 21st century: Identifying, developing and assessing what matters’. In this episode, we’ll take you to the closing session of the conference – the ‘In Conversation’ between ACER CEO Professor Geoff Masters AO and Neil Selwyn, a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. We’ll share highlights from their discussion about what schooling might look like in 10 years’ time. 
Now, this session began directly after Neil delivered the conference’s Karmel Oration, so, as you’re going to hear a few references to that talk, it’s important I give you an understanding of what he discussed. 
Neil’s Oration was titled ‘On with the 21st century! Preparing Australian education for the 2020s and beyond.’ 

 So, it’s clear from that title that he took the conference theme to heart. In particular, Neil focused on what education might look like in 2029. He spoke about how there are often three different kinds of predictions when we speak about predicting certain things for the future – the probable, possible and preferable – and how it’s important we try to stick to speaking about probable futures, rather than a future that is possible or preferable. This led him to speak about the role of an educator during the times of climate change, the rise of online education and how we can best prepare students for careers of the future.

Podcast Special: In Conversation with Geoff Masters and Neil Selwyn

Childhood and adolescent anxiety is something many classroom teachers will come face-to-face with, so it’s important to understand what a teacher’s role could be in identifying and managing anxiety. Are there behaviours a teacher could be observing in the classroom that might be typical of anxiety? How can a classroom educator help to reinforce the work of a student’s psychologist or therapist? And, what can teachers do to make their classroom more comfortable and accommodating for students experiencing anxiety?

To discuss all of this, I’m joined in today’s episode by Dr Rowena Conroy, a clinical psychologist who works with children, adolescents and families at the Children’s Private Medical Group in Victoria. We sat down together at the National Education Summit in Melbourne after her presentation on student anxiety. 

Presenter: Dominique Russell
Interviewee: Dr Rowena Conroy

Podcast Special: Identifying and managing student anxiety

In this special episode, we're delighted to be joined by the two recipients of this year’s Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science teaching. Sarah Finney, a Grade 3 and 4 classroom teacher at Stirling East Primary School in South Australia was named winner for primary school teaching, and Dr Samantha Moyle from Brighton Secondary School, also in South Australia, was named winner for secondary teaching. Both educators are remarkably dedicated to harnessing curiosity about Science in their students, and providing them with authentic, real-world learning experiences. 
Interviewees: Samantha Moyle and Sarah Finney
Host: Dominique Russell
Sponsor: University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education

Podcast Special: Achieving authentic learning experiences in Science

In this special episode, we take a look back over our favourite moments from the podcasts we published throughout 2019. With dozens of episodes to choose from, this highlights reel takes you through some of our fascinating guests and thought-provoking conversations.

Teacher’s podcast highlights for 2018

Teacher Magazine (ACER)

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