The most recent instalment of Mission Australia’s Youth Survey – which surveys tens of thousands of Australians aged 15 to 19 – shows that young people are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment. In your school, what initiatives do you have in place to engage students in learning about sustainability, and how their actions can have a positive impact on the environment? 
At one school in Victoria, sustainability is embedded across the school, and in this episode, their Sustainability Coordinator, Venkata Kalva, joins Dominique Russell to discuss their journey to prioritising sustainability in the school community, the function of the school’s Green Team, and advice for other schools across the country looking to prioritise sustainability in their school settings. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Venkata Kalva

Building a culture of sustainability in schools

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

Teacher speaks to principal Jenny Dowsett, who shares strategies that are raising numeracy outcomes for students at her primary school.

School improvement Episode 5: Numeracy outcomes

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

It's Episode 64 of our series on School Improvement and the topic is something that we're really passionate about at Teacher – school libraries and encouraging students to read for pleasure. So, it could be the main library, classroom book collections and displays. It could be something like small reading corners and nooks around the school. How do you go about creating a fresh and welcoming space for all students? What kind of things inform your decision when it comes to new stock or just re-promoting existing titles that you’ve got? We've got 3 great guests for you – Mali Jorm, Madison Dearnaley and Tracy Kelly, who will be sharing their tips. We'll be chatting about what the latest research says about strategies to encourage reading for pleasure and of course the importance of student voice. And we'll be sharing personal and student book recommendations.
Host: Jo Earp
Guests: Mali Jorm, Madison Dearnaley, Tracy Kelly

School Improvement: Managing, restocking and refreshing library spaces

In a Teacher exclusive, Minister of Education and Research for Estonia Dr Kristina Kallas joins editor Jo Earp for this special podcast to talk about setting teachers and students up for success, the early years foundations for its impressive PISA performance, and the next big challenge – AI in education. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Dr Kristina Kallas

Exclusive: An interview with Estonian Education Minister Dr Kristina Kallas

The winner of the 2026 Global Teacher Prize has just been announced. Rouble Nagi from India has been named winner and has taken home the US $1 million in prize money. Rouble was recognised for her work in transforming neglected walls in her community into hundreds of vibrant, open-air learning centres. The GEMS Education Global Teacher Prize is the largest of its kind and is a Varkey Foundation initiative organised in collaboration with UNESCO. It’s now in its 10th year and aims to shine a spotlight on the positive impact teachers make on society and recognise the exceptional educators who have made an outstanding contribution to the profession. 

One Australian teacher was a top 10 finalist this year – Colleen O’Rourke, Digital Technologies Educator from the Hills Christian Community School in Adelaide, South Australia. She’s been recognised for developing the Nature-Nurture-Network curriculum and for her work in supporting neurodivergent learners. Dominique Russell sat down with Colleen ahead of the announcement to hear all about this work and what it means to her to be recognised in the top 10 this year. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Colleen O'Rouke

An interview with Australian top 10 finalist of the Global Teacher Prize Colleen O’Rourke

We’re well and truly into the new school year here in Australia. In today’s episode, we run you through the highlights from this month, including our round up of some key events happening throughout the school year to help you with lesson planning, and an article that shares 4 design principles to help turn classrooms into spaces that support and celebrate student learning.
Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Teacher Staffroom: A strong start to a new school year

We're joined by St Columba Anglican School Principal Allan Guihot and Director of Professional Learning Chris Delaney. They’re in Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales North Coast, and the school is a member of the award-winning Teaching School Hubs program from Independent Schools New South Wales (ISNSW). The program brings together schools and partner universities to provide teacher trainees with regular, mentored experience while they complete their qualification. The aim is to increase their skills and their confidence in the classrooms, so they’re better prepared once they enter the workforce. It’s a paid placement – trainees get paid for one day per week for a year, which is co-funded by ISNSW and the school. And then, depending on the arrangement, the trainee could also be working additional days as a Teacher Aide (that might be a Teaching Assistant or Classroom Support Assistant where you are), and that additional work is funded by the school, so that is something that St Columba has chosen to do. In our chat, Allan and Chris explain more about the program model and how it works, the school’s participation, and the benefits for everyone involved – including those teachers doing the mentoring. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guests: Allan Guihot , Chris Delaney

Preparing trainees for the classroom – the Teaching School Hubs program

In this episode, we’re talking about a whole school approach to wellbeing. Our guest is Dr Alexandra Hennessey, from the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester in the UK. Dr Hennessey and colleagues have explored how different schools in the UK have adopted the Well Schools framework – now, that’s a project started by the Youth Sport Trust in 2020. The findings of the study have been published in the journal Frontiers in Education (Hennessey et al., 2025). The team has also published 2 short reads – some school case studies on how the 10 schools are supporting wellbeing in their community, which runs through things like intent, implementation and impact; and then there’s a Well Schools Final Report Executive Summary as well (Hennessey et al., 2023). You can find links to all those documents in the transcript of this podcast over at Teacher magazine. Our chat with Dr Hennessey includes how wellbeing and learning go hand-in-hand, and we’re going to focus on 2 aspects of the study in particular – the role of teacher wellbeing and, of course, the importance of that whole school approach. She also mentions at one stage INSET, and that in the UK, is staff PD, essentially, where the staff get in-service training and the pupils don’t attend on that day. 
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Dr Alexandra Hennessey

A whole school approach to teacher wellbeing with Dr Alexandra Hennessey

Today, we're delighted to welcome Mandy Nayton, Educational and Developmental Psychologist and Chief Executive Officer of the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation. Our conversation is going to delve into all things phonics, word study, vocabulary skills, and more. Along the way, Mandy will share a range of practical examples, discuss how this work might look across K-12, and you might even learn a new word along the way, just like I did. 
Host: Dominique Beech
Guest: Mandy Nayton

Supporting students of all ages to read successfully – phonics, morphology, vocabulary and word study

In our latest reader survey – which we run annually to give our audience the opportunity to let us know about their experiences in the education sector and how we can better support your professional practice through our content – you let us know that you’d like more content on the topic of curriculum implementation. We’ve been hard at work having a look at this on Teacher in the first few months of 2026, and in today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom we're going to take you through some of my highlights from recent weeks. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you throughout this podcast, so you can 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: Implementation of programs in the curriculum

Our guest on today’s podcast is Kayla Borg from St Mary’s Primary School in Whittlesea, Victoria. She shares how she went about co designing a podcast lesson for her year 5 and 6 students in partnership with the eSmart team at the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, what her students learned from this experience, and why real world, student led digital learning can have such a powerful ripple effect across the entire school community.
Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Podcast special: Co-designing a podcast lesson with students and experts

We’re going to be talking all about improving induction – for both early career teachers and school leaders. Our guest today is Tim Bullard, CEO of AITSL – the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. We’re talking all about their latest Spotlight evidence summaries. Part 1 – Improving Induction for Early Career Teachers explores evidence-based approaches to strengthening teacher induction. It outlines the Guidelines for the Induction of Early Career Teachers in Australia and examines how well-designed induction programs improve teacher wellbeing, retention, and professional growth. Part 2 – Improving Induction for School Leaders explores the benefits of good induction for school leaders, shares how leaders arrive in a leadership role via 3 different pathways, and provides evidence-informed practices to structure induction programs for new school leaders. , We dive into some of the findings from those Spotlights. There are plenty of practical tips – around mentoring, support and adapting the induction for your specific school context.
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Guest: Tim Bullard

Unpacking effective supports for teacher and leader induction with Tim Bullard

Professor Alex Bowers from New York joins Dominique Beech to discuss his research into school leadership types and teacher professional development needs. The conversation covers the alignment of perceptions between teachers and principals regarding school leadership, his innovative idea for re-organising how we target professional development, and more. 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guest: Professor Alex Bowers

Professor Alex Bowers on types of school leadership and targeting professional development

Here at Teacher magazine, we are lucky to have the opportunity to work with experts across all areas of education. We interview them for articles, record podcasts with them, accept submissions they’ve written specifically for our readers, and share exclusive excerpts from their books. This month on Teacher, we have published so many pieces of content from those working in the sector, and we're excited to share more with you in this episode of Teacher Staffroom. Of course, we’ll be posing questions throughout, so we encourage you to pause the audio, gather some colleagues, and reflect on how you can use these insights in your own school context. 
Host: Rebecca Vukovic

Teacher Staffroom Episode 75: Drawing on expertise in education

In today's episode of School Improvement, we're going to hear all about the Questions for Thinking program (also known as Q4T) – the professional learning program in place at Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne. We're joined by Gus Humphries, the Q4T lead at the school. Gus is also a Humanities and Politics teacher and has been an educator for 20 years. If his name, or the name of Q4T, sounds familiar to you, it might be because you read the article Gus published on Teacher back in March on this exact topic. In the piece, Gus delved into how and why he developed this professional learning program with the aim to better harness the determination and aspiration of their dedicated teaching staff and support efficient, effective and embedded change in teaching practice. Q4T is a professional learning program that allows teachers to investigate and develop an area of their practice. It's an opt-in, confidential partnership between a partner and a participant that's focused on empowering teachers to meet student learning needs. In our conversation today, Gus expands on the 8 key ingredients the program consists of and the impact it's having on staff and school culture. 
Host: Dominique Beech
Guest: Gus Humphries

A people-focused professional learning program

In this podcast special, Dominique Beech sits down with Dr Dan Edwards, Acting Head of ACER's Student Learning and Progress Division, to talk about the future of assessment. He shares his insights on how assessment can support students at key transition points across K-12, the impact of AI, and more. 

Dr Dan Edwards on the future of assessment

As a listener of the Teacher podcast, you’ll know we love to speak with school staff about the incredible work they’re doing in their school settings to improve student outcomes. Equally, though, we know our audience are keen to hear from experts in the field and about important research updates. This month on Teacher, we’ve been busy covering the news of the new International Early Learning and Child Wellbeing Study, the new PISA 2029 innovative domain on media and AI literacy and National Reconciliation Week. Two of our columnists, Professor Martin Westwell and Andreas Schleicher, also published new pieces for us. Today we're going to share the details of all of these stories. 
Host: Dominique Beech

Teacher Staffroom: Bringing you the latest expert insights in education

Understanding how children learn and develop in the early years is key to supporting strong educational outcomes and lifelong wellbeing. Last month, the OECD released findings from the 2025 Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, or IELS, the first internationally comparable study designed to measure how children are learning and developing at age 5. The study looks across 3 key domains: foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional skills. As we know, the early years from birth to age 5 are a critical period for building the foundations children need to communicate, regulate their emotions, concentrate, solve problems and engage with others. 

In today's episode, we're joined by Dr Dan Cloney, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research and Lead Researcher for IELS here at ACER. We unpack some of the key findings from the study, explore what made the assessment design unique, and discuss why it's so important to ensure every child arrives at school with the strongest possible foundations. 
Host: Rebecca Vukovic
Guest: Dr Dan Cloney


Dr Dan Cloney on measuring learning in the early years

EDUtech is one of the largest and most prominent education and technology events on our calendar for 2026, and each year it brings together educators, school leaders and EdTech providers across K-12, higher education, and the vocational sectors. Over 2 days last week, we were there in Sydney to have conversations with the education community and hear from local and international speakers.

As you’ll hear in this episode, we had our podcast mic with us throughout the entire 2 days, so we captured keynote sessions, panel discussions and even some of our chats with educators at the event.

What you’re about to hear are some of our honest and raw reflections on the sessions we attended. We include some short excerpts from the presentations and links to further reading as well. Most of the recordings were done in the packed exhibition hall so there is some background noise throughout. We hope you enjoy this episode as we take you along with us! 

Hosts: Rebecca Vukovic, Dominique Beech

EDUtech 2026 – our reflections and conference highlights

In this podcast, Dominique Beech hears from Joanna Baker, Head of Campus at Haileybury Pangea – the fully online campus of Haileybury, and independent co-educational school. The online campus serves approximately 180 students from a range of backgrounds across Australia and in this episode we hear all about what it’s like to teach students in a virtual classroom setting.
Host: Dominique Beech
Guest: Joanna Baker

Teaching methods: Teaching at an online school

Welcome to Episode 109 of The Research Files, and I've actually got 2 guests with me today – Professor Sandra Gatenhoff, Academic Lead Learning and Teaching in the School of Creative Arts at Queensland University of Technology, that's QUT of course, and Dr John Nicholas Saunders, Senior Lecturer in Education at Australian Catholic University, that's ACU. Now, their study was featured in the recent Australian Journal of Education (AJE) Special Issue on Arts in Education. In that paper (Gattenhof & Saunders, 2026), they warn the arts and creative sectors here in Australia are facing unprecedented challenges. We're going to be taking a look at what's happening in schools then in relation to that, starting with the declining enrolment numbers in year 12 arts subjects in Australian states and territories, and the implications of that. We'll also be talking about the challenge of out-of-field teaching in arts education and some of those practical supports and solutions for schools.
Host: Jo Earp

The decline in senior secondary arts enrolments

Our guest for this first episode of our new series on Behaviour Management is teacher, education consultant and author Dr Bill Rogers. An Honorary Fellow of Melbourne University, he shares his expertise on behaviour management, effective teaching, stress management, colleague support and teacher welfare around the globe through lectures, seminars, professional development courses and, of course, with teachers in the classroom.

Behaviour Management Episode 1: Dr Bill Rogers on starting the new year

Our guest for the second episode in our Behaviour Management podcast series is Phil Beadle – a teacher, education consultant, public speaker, author and broadsheet columnist. Phil was once named Secondary Teacher of the Year in the UK and is considered an expert in the areas of literacy and behaviour management. In today’s podcast he joins us on the line from the UK to discuss behaviour management, but in particular the different de-escalation techniques that educators can use to manage challenging behaviours in their classrooms.

Behaviour Management Episode 2: Phil Beadle on de-escalation techniques

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

Our guest today is Dylan Wiliam – Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London. He’s a former school teacher, over the last 15 years his academic career has been focused on the use of assessment to support learning, and he now works with teachers all over the world on developing formative assessment practice. 

We caught up with him in Melbourne to talk about effective questioning in the classroom. Over the next 20 minutes, he’ll be explaining what’s wrong with the traditional teacher approach of ‘I’ll ask a question and you put your hands up to answer’, sharing a classroom display technique called ‘the parking lot’, and describing how to plan your lesson around checkpoints that he calls ‘hinge questions’.

Podcast Special: Dylan Wiliam On Effective Questioning In The Classroom

Welcome to the first ever Teacher Talks, a podcast event hosted by Teacher magazine, and proudly brought to you by our podcast supporter, the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. 

My name is Rebecca Vukovic, I’m Deputy Editor of Teacher magazine, and it is my pleasure to share with you the very special interview we recorded in Melbourne in front of a live audience of teachers and school leaders. 

Our guest, Dr Lyn Sharratt, is a highly accomplished practitioner, researcher, author and presenter. She holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto, and coordinates the doctoral internship program in the Leadership, Higher and Adult Education Department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. 

In this episode, I sit down with Lyn to discuss one specific leadership approach, Learning Walks and Talks. We have a lot to cover in this episode, from building a culture of trust amongst staff for Learning Walks and Talks, to the nuts and bolts of how to do a Learning Walk and Talk effectively and confidently. What’s also really exciting about this episode is you’ll be hearing from several audience members who had the opportunity to ask Lyn their questions about Learning Walks and Talks, in a way that was specific to their school contexts.

Teacher Talks Episode 1: Dr Lyn Sharratt on Learning Walks and Talks

Teachers are asked to respond to new and uncertain situations all the time – from keeping abreast of curriculum and subject knowledge updates to making quick pivots when a lesson isn’t quite going according to plan. Our topic for this episode is teacher adaptability and our guest is Dr Rebecca Collie – a DECRA Fellow and Scientia Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology in the School of Education at UNSW. Dr Collie and colleagues recently published a paper in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, on their study into adaptability among science teachers in schools across eight countries. We’ll be talking about the study findings, and the research around teacher adaptability. We’ll also talk about the link between teacher adaptability and self-confidence, behaviour management and student self-efficacy. And, there’ll be some recommendations for school leaders in there around the importance of professional learning communities.
Host: Jo Earp
Guest: Rebecca Collie
Sponsor: Bank First

The Research Files Episode 62: Teacher adaptability

How can teachers go about identifying the underlying causes of a student’s behaviour, and then approach responding to it in a respectful and effective way? To dissect these questions further, we’re joined today by Senior Lecturer at Monash University, Dr Erin Leif, and PhD student and former primary school teacher, Russell Fox.
Erin joined Monash University in 2018 after working as a therapy assistant in a school for children with developmental disabilities in Massachusetts in the United States and completing her masters and doctoral degrees in behaviour sciences. Now, in her capacity at Monash University, Erin heads up a postgraduate course in applied behaviour analysis.
Russell’s PhD research – which you’ll hear him speak about throughout the episode – focused on understanding what is required to support teachers to successfully and sustainably implement evidence-based behaviour support practices, specifically School-wide Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (or SWPBIS). 
Host: Dominique Russell
Guests: Russell Fox, Erin Leif

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