Teacher Magazine (ACER)

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Late last year, the winners of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching were announced. Each year, the 2 prizes – one for a primary school educator and one for a secondary school educator – recognise achievements in STEM teaching. For 2025, the winner for primary school teaching is Paula Taylor, Executive Teacher in STEM at the Academy of Future Skills within the ACT Education Directorate. The secondary school educator recognised is Matt Dodds, Biology and Physics Teacher at Glen Innes High School in New South Wales. We sat down with both of them at the beginning of the 2026 school year to hear all about the work they were recognised for. It was such a delight to hear about the teachers that had an impact on them when they were younger, the lesson activities that are a hit in their science classrooms, and how they’re sharing their knowledge with other educators. Host: Dominique Russell Guests: Paula Taylor, Matt Dodds

It has been an exciting year of Teacher podcasts! In this annual wrap-up of highlights from 2025, the team at Teacher select their favourite episodes and discuss why the episodes resonated with them and Teacher listeners. They also chat about how they put the podcast together, how they select guests for each episode, and give a sneak peek of what’s to come in 2026. Hosts: Jo Earp, Rebecca Vukovic, Dominique Russell

As we head into the last month of 2025, many of you might be starting to turn your mind towards the beginning of the next school year. A big part of getting ready for a new year is, of course, setting up your learning spaces. Whether it be how you’ll set up your own classroom, the school library space, or even outdoor areas, there’s plenty to consider. We’ve published a range of new content on the topic of learning spaces recently at Teacher. In this episode, we'll bring you up to speed on it all. 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

It is important that teachers feel confident to respectfully and effectively address religion and beliefs in diverse classrooms. But it can be difficult, particularly for early career or beginner teachers, to know where to start. Recently, Informit – in partnership with RMIT University and the Australian Council for Educational Research – held a free professional development webinar on this very topic. In that webinar, ACER's very own Pru Mitchell, Manager of Information Services, interviewed Professor Peter Sherlock, Executive Director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture at Charles Sturt University. In today's podcast, we sit down with Peter to follow up on some of the key themes to come from that webinar. In particular, we discuss why it's important for schools to engage with religion and belief systems, how teachers can engage students in meaningful conversations about religion in a respectful way, and the resources available to help teachers to build their confidence in this space. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Professor Peter Sherlock

In this episode of our Research Files podcast series, editor Jo Earp talks to ACER’s Dr Tim Friedman about the latest Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). We’ll be focusing on the theme of staff wellbeing and looking at some of the protective factors when it comes to levels of teacher job satisfaction and stress.

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