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Welcome to Episode 1 of our Teaching Methods series. Today we speak to John Fleming, a leading advocate for education reform and someone whose views are highly sought-after by education professionals throughout Australia, about the method known as explicit instruction.

Teaching Methods - John Fleming

Today we're joined by Pauline Martinot, a medical doctor who specialises in child health and prevention. Dr Martinot pursued a research career in cognitive neurosciences on the developing child and did her PhD at NeuroSpin CEA Paris Saclay. Today, she works as an AI medical and scientific Director at Doctolib in France. 

Dr Martinot is also the lead author of the groundbreaking study that points to the first year of school as the time and place where a maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys. The results of this study were published in the paper titled Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade, published in Nature last month. The paper reports the results of a 4-year longitudinal assessment of language and mathematical performance of all French first and second graders, representing over 2.6 million children. The researchers found that boys and girls exhibited very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a maths gender gap in favour of boys became highly significant after just 4 months of schooling and reached an effect size of about 0.20 after one year. In this episode, Dr Martinot joins us on the line from France to share how her colleagues went about conducting the study, some more key findings, and the impact of this research on schools and teachers around the world. 
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Guest: Dr Pauline Martinot

Addressing the maths gender gap in the early years

Thinking about your own school, how are you helping students understand the many opportunities and pathways open to them, and the training or further education requirements they’ll need to reach their career goals? We know schools play a crucial role in supporting post-school pathways, and recently at Teacher we’ve been exploring many facets of careers education. Today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom will bring you up to date with this coverage, and we’ll also share some of my other recent highlights from our content – which, by the way, is freely accessible at any time over at our website, teachermagazine.com. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you 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: Dominique Russell

Teacher Staffroom Episode 68: Supporting post-school pathways

As a teacher listening to this episode, I’m sure you remember your first few years in the profession – the unique challenges you faced and the support that made a difference to you. But what does the evidence say about how schools can best support early career teachers? New research from academics at Monash University has uncovered specific factors that support early career teachers’ sense of belonging at school. Four main themes emerged: teacher collaboration, relationships with colleagues, supporting early career teachers through their early-career journey, and getting early career teachers involved in school decision making. The lead author of the report, Ebony Melzak, joins me for this episode of The Research Files. Ebony is a psychologist and PhD candidate. Together, we’ll go through each theme in detail, what the research says, and how it might look in different school settings. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Ebony Melzak

Fostering a sense of belonging for early career teachers

What are the persistent teaching dilemmas you find yourself thinking about in your spare time and circling back to time and again? Professor Brianna Kennedy from the University of Glasgow joins the podcast to talk about a 2-stage process for cracking persistent challenges in the classroom, how teachers can use it in practice, and the impact it has on student learning and engagement. 
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Guest: Professor Brianna Kennedy
Find out more about Brianna’s work on Instagram and Facebook: @solveteachingdilemmas and her websites: briannalkennedy.com & www.gla.ac.uk/schools/education/staff/briannalkennedy/

Cracking persistent classroom dilemmas with Professor Brianna Kennedy

For students, a sizeable chunk of their school day is spent at lunch and recess, in the playground and recreation spaces, and outdoor learning areas. So, on this episode we're joined by Dr Fatemeh Aminpour, who is a Research Fellow at the City Futures Research Centre at the University of New South Wales (that’s UNSW Sydney). We’ll be looking at this from the students’ perspective – talking about what works well for children in different situations and how schools can look at those small incremental changes to make better use of what they’ve got. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Dr Fatemeh Aminpour

Play spaces with Dr Fatemeh Aminpour

Did you know that here at Teacher magazine we publish content in different formats? From short to long articles, reader submissions, columns from distinguished authors, podcasts, videos or infographics – we publish fresh content on our website 4 days a week. In today’s episode, we're going to share some of the podcast highlights from this month on Teacher, including snippets from those recordings. We’ll also tell you a little more about the different formats, and point you to some of the other highlights from the month that you won’t want to miss. 
Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Teacher Staffroom Episode 69: Our range of different formats

The past few years have been a challenging time for schools in Australia and around the world. Schools have adapted to the impacts of COVID-19; some have also dealt with natural disasters like floods and bushfires. For school principals – no matter their level of experience – new research shows leading during crises like these has taught them many lessons and led to a transformation of perspectives. 

In this episode of The Research Files we're joined by Michelle Striepe from Edith Cowan University. She’s the lead author of a new paper titled ‘Lessons from Australasian principals’ experiences with crises: adapting, learning and transforming’. Her research was carried out with colleagues Christine Cunningham, Mohini Devi, David Gurr, Fiona Longmuir, Sylvia Robertson, Adam Taylor and Pauline Thompson, and in our conversation today, Michelle takes us through their findings and, of course, some important implications for school leaders. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Michalle Striepe


Principals leading through crises – what did they learn?

R U OK? Day is a national day of action that reminds Australians to check in with others and ask ‘are you OK?’ 

In this special episode, Teacher editor Jo Earp is joined by Dr Hannah Brown to talk about some of the signs that it might be time to have the conversation, how to prepare and the 4 simple steps of ask, listen, encourage action and check in. They also discuss some of the support services and resources available.

Special: R U OK Day – 4 steps for checking in with a colleague, friend or loved one

In today’s episode, Dominique Russell is joined by Chantel Barnes. She’s Principal at Glenora District School in the rural town of Glenora outside Hobart, Tasmania. It’s a small K-12 school, and they’ve made some incredible progress on attendance in the past 12 months. Chantel tells us about how they’ve achieved this, the initiatives that are making a difference in their setting, and her advice for other schools out there. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Chantel Barnes
Sponsor: Monash University

Focusing on presence, not absence – flipping the script on attendance

It’s well known from the research that high quality teaching and leadership teams learn from each other's practices. Recently on Teacher, the leadership team from Warriapendi Primary School in Perth, Western Australia, wrote 3 articles for us all about the journey they’ve been on to build instructional capacity in literacy to improve student outcomes in the area. 

Today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom will bring you up to date with the insights they shared in those articles, and we’ll also share some of my other recent highlights from our content – which, by the way, is freely accessible at any time over at our website, teachermagazine.com. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you 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: Dominique Russell
Sponsor: Monash University's Let's Talk Teaching podcast

Teacher Staffroom: Building instructional capacity

By building strong professional learning communities (PLCs) school leaders can improve not only the quality of teaching, but also student outcomes. So, what does an effective PLC look like and how do you go about building one? My guest is Dr Lawrence Ingvarson, a Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). He’s developed ACER’s Professional Learning Community Framework (PLCF). The framework covers five key domains: professional culture; leadership; a focus on student learning, wellbeing and engagement; a focus on improving professional knowledge and practice; and teachers who think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.

School Improvement Episode 10: Effective professional learning communities

Dr David Armstrong from Flinders University is our guest in today’s Behaviour Management podcast. We explore how certain behaviour management models are simply ineffective, particularly for students with learning or mental health difficulties, and discuss his research in this area.

Behaviour Management Episode 4: Behaviour approaches for children with disabilities

The team’s on the road this week at the ACER Research Conference in Sydney, where the theme for 2018 is ‘Teaching practices that make a difference: Insights from research’. In this special episode, we share highlights from the ‘In Conversation’ session on evidence-based teaching practices between Laureate Professor John Hattie and ACER CEO Professor Geoff Masters AO. The facilitator was Tony Mackay AM, of the Centre for Strategic Education in Melbourne.

Podcast Special: John Hattie And Geoff Masters In Conversation

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.

Behaviour Management Episode 5: Planning for positive behaviour

If you were to visit any preschool or kindergarten classroom, you’d surely find that shared book reading is a common activity used to facilitate discussions and support a young child’s language and literacy development. A new study, published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, examined the extent to which preschool teachers use different types of questions during classroom-based shared book reading. Researchers from the Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas, Ohio State University, the American Institute for Research and Michigan State University all collaborated on this study. They found that only 24 per cent of what teachers said during the shared book reading were questions, and the kids answered the questions accurately 85 per cent of the time. In today’s episode, I’m joined by one of the study’s authors, Dr Tricia Zucker, who is an Associate Professor with the Children’s Learning Institute at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston. We chat about what the main findings were to come from the research, whether the questions teachers were asking were too simple for students, and how teachers could improve their questioning practices to ensure children are given the appropriate level of challenge. 
Guest: Dr Tricia Zucker
Interviewer: Rebecca Vukovic
Podcast supporter: Seven Steps to Writing Success

The Research Files Episode 54: Questions during shared book reading in the early years

Teacher Magazine (ACER)

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