Show Notes
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
More from Teacher Magazine (ACER)
Recorded live at the National Education Summit in Melbourne, Dominique Beech sits down with Professor Miriam Tanti from La Trobe University to find out about the research she and her colleagues have been conducting into the science of learning and Generative AI which has culminated in a free, practical guide for secondary school teachers. Host: Dominique Beech Guest: Miriam Tanti
In case you missed it, the PISA 2025 results were recently released. As is always the case, there is plenty to digest. This month at Teacher, we’ve shared insights from many experts to begin to unpack the results. In this episode of Teacher Staffroom, we catch you up. Host: Dominique Beech
Recorded live at the National Education Summit in Melbourne, Teacher’s Deputy Editor Rebecca Vukovic is joined by Jonathan Heard, a Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research for this School Improvement episode. They discuss the importance of having a shared definition on what critical thinking is, the connection between critical thinking and information literacy, and provide some key takeaways for teachers, teacher librarians and school leaders. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Jonathan Heard
Hello, it’s Rebecca Vukovic jumping into your podcast feed to let you know about a new episode that will be in your ears tomorrow. Recorded live at the National Education Summit in Melbourne, I am joined by Jonathan Heard, a Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research for this School Improvement episode. We discuss the importance of having a shared definition on what critical thinking is, the connection between critical thinking and information literacy, and provide some key takeaways for teachers, teacher librarians and school leaders.
Last week, the latest 2025 results for the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (or, PISA) were released. PISA is the world’s largest international assessment of student learning, and it shows how well 15-year-old students can apply their knowledge and skills in science, reading and mathematics to real-world situations. PISA 2025 involved 760,000 students internationally, and in Australia, more than 14,500 students from 766 schools participated in the assessment.