John Marsden is best known for his top-selling Tomorrow When the War Began YA series, in which a group of young people find themselves suddenly in a war zone without the protections of the adults or institutions they've relied upon ...
More »School Management
Leadership in Education – Part 2: Patrick O’Reilly – Where have we gone wrong?
Despite record investment in education, Australian students’ literacy and numeracy levels have been steadily declining. This podcast series speaks with some of Australia’s K-12 education leaders and asks the key question: What, if anything, are we doing wrong? In episode ...
More »We’re not teaching a class, we’re teaching a room full of unique individuals: Opinion
This year’s Education Week theme is 'Every student, every voice'. This week is the perfect time to step back and reflect on how we can help strengthen our pupils’ voices, and consider why it’s so critical to do so. Helping ...
More »Negotiating the ‘range of the strange’: what we can learn from the US middle school system
Students moving from primary classrooms to a secondary timetable suffer from a kind of culture shock when their expectations of school are radically challenged by the pace and siloed structures of faculty education. Students may find school overwhelming, disorienting and ...
More »The school that reinvented itself
Imagine being the principal of a school with just two students. But if that wasn't bad enough, imagine the school had a poor reputation, too. That was the predicament facing new acting principal Chris Burgess of Taradale Primary School, 100km ...
More »Can’t we just get along? Managing teacher-parent relationships
Violent encounters between parents, teachers and principals regularly hit the headlines, with politicians bemoaning a perceived lack of respect for teachers in society. Indeed, in a recent article for Monash Lens by educational and developmental psychologist Sally Kenney and Monash University’s Dr ...
More »The school inside an aged care home: Adelaide launches an Australia-first in intergenerational learning
Two years ago, the Kalyra Woodcroft aged care facility in Adelaide was giving another one of its regular site tours. Neither the guide, Terry Wilby, Kalyra’s Director of Care, nor the people being led through the grounds had any idea ...
More »How to create a sustainable school
A recent study found that while over 90 per cent of Australians are concerned about environmental sustainability, only half believe they are doing their fair share to save our planet. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) describes our predicament ...
More »‘Leaders who read’: Teacher librarians on how we can get kids reading for pleasure
How can we foster a school culture where reading isn’t seen by kids as just a chore, or something that only ‘nerds’ would enjoy? In a new research paper, teacher librarians have their say. The article, published in the Australian ...
More »Future schools need thoughtful design, with teacher involvement crucial
The spaces in which we live and move have profound – if often invisible – impacts on our wellbeing, our psyche, our behaviour and how we relate to each other. If you’ve ever listened to 99% Invisible, or read Foucault, ...
More »