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Our guest today is Associate Professor Lynn Barnett-Morris from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For the last three years she’s been researching Kindergarten-aged children to determine how playfulness in the classroom is viewed by the children themselves, their classmates and their teachers. The result – a longitudinal study titled 'The education of playful boys: class clowns in the classroom'. She joins The Research Files today, on a bit of a scratchy line from the US, to discuss the key findings, but to kick things off, I ask Lynn to tell listeners why she decided to conduct this research in the first place.

The Research Files Episode 42: Playfulness and class clown behaviour

Moving to a new school is an important time in any child’s life. For students from a migrant or refugee background it often means learning a new language or joining outside of the normal transition period, at different points throughout the school year. In this podcast we're at Noble Park Primary School to speak to Principal David Rothstadt about how staff support new students and their families, and create a safe and secure learning environment.

School Improvement Episode 17: Supporting migrant and refugee students

In this episode of The Research Files, we're joined on the line by Professor Helen Christensen, The Director and Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute. Black Dog Institute is an Australian organisation focussed on identifying, preventing and treating mental illness. They’re also pioneers in mental health research, and one research area is concerned with suicide prevention. This area is named CRESP, which stands for the Centre of Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention and brings together key researchers to focus on projects and trials with the aim of lowering suicide rates. Professor Christensen is currently leading a phase of CRESP research – which she labels CRESP 2 – that aims to deliver suicide prevention strategies across the country, taking a technology-based approach. Their work will include intervening at both primary and secondary school levels, with strategies centring on the use of different smartphone apps.

The Research Files Episode 45: Suicide prevention strategies in schools

In this episode of Global Education, we're joined on the line by Dr Louise van Rhyn from Cape Town, South Africa. She’s the founder of a program named Partners for Possibility, which pairs business leaders with principals for a 12-month structured leadership development program. The program was recognised internationally after winning a WISE Award for innovative solutions to education challenges and their positive social impact.

Global Education Episode 16: Principal partnerships in South Africa

Our guest for today’s episode of the Research Files is Dr Carol Newall, a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at Macquarie University. She joins us today to talk about a study she led which investigates how a child’s gender impacts an adults’ perception of their ability and their enjoyment of Science. The 80 adult participants in this study were all Macquarie University students, 20 of whom were education students and 60 were studying psychology. 

These adults were given a fictional profile of an eight-year-old child with the task of teaching that child over Skype. Each child’s fictional profile was experimentally manipulated depending on whether they were boy or girl, and the stereotypes associated with that gender. For example, one child liked tea parties and the colour pink and another liked climbing trees and the colour blue.

As Dr Newall will explain in today’s episode, the results from this study revealed that participants rated girls as less academically capable than boys in Physics, and they delivered less scientific information during their teaching module when they believed they were teaching a girl.

The Research Files Episode 47: Gender bias in Science education

My guest today is Dr Jeff Thomas, a lecturer in the Master of Teaching and Graduate Certificate of Education at the University of Tasmania. Jeff’s research and teaching interests include the relationship between engagement and classroom behaviour, and reengagement approaches for disengaged students.

With the start of the school year fast approaching here in Australia, many teachers will be busy preparing for those first, initial weeks in the classroom. And according to Jeff, the beginning of the year is an amazing opportunity to engage students, to build relationships and to establish explicit expectations around student behaviour. But, he says, it’s important to plan for positive behaviour. 

Our discussion today covers many different areas including how to plan for that positive behaviour in your classroom, which routines are critical to establish in the initial weeks of the year, and practical things to keep in mind when responding to particularly challenging behaviours as they arise in class.

The Research Files Episode 42: Playfulness and class clown behaviour

Teacher Magazine (ACER)