Minnis Journals

For Education Leaders

Leadership Values and Beliefs: A Journey of School Community Discovery

When a new principal arrives in a school, the resident staff will often spend some time trying to determine the new leader's values and beliefs about learning and teaching. A school's leadership needs to ensure that overtly articulated and implied values are clearly understood and then appropriately actioned by all staff. The values and beliefs that a school holds help to contribute to its image. Read more

Explicit Direct Instruction: A review and study into one Australian school's transformation

The downward trend in Australian school student scores in tests such as NAPLAN, PISA and TIMSS has understandably caused concern among Australian educators, policymakers and the media. A six-year trial of explicit direct instruction (EDI) created a remarkable turnaround in NAPLAN results, enrolments and teacher engagement. Before exploring these aspects in more detail, it’s important to establish some background about EDI. Read more

ATAR-less entry – students like it, so do unis

Anna To’s first steps towards becoming an engineer have been made a lot simpler by applying to Swinburne’s Early Entry program.
The program is an acknowledgement of the stress that COVID has put on students and part of a turn away from assessment of Year 12 students through the ATAR and towards universities identifying the type of students they think will do well.
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Bringing the PIRATE approach to the science classroom

Whenever we think of pirates, we imagine crazy seafarers. Up until a few years ago, I also had the same image of pirates... until I stumbled upon a Twitter chat called 'Teach Like a Pirate', or TLAP for short.
The whole premise behind TLAP was introduced by author and presenter, Dave Burgess. He promotes using a love of education to transform students' education experiences.
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IoT provides security in Brisbane school

More than 1,200 students and staff Redeemer Lutheran College, a Brisbane K-12 school, will be able to download content to their connected devices and access high-bandwidth applications like video, virtual reality, augmented reality and gaming anywhere on campus with their high capacity new network.
The network will both underpin the school's devices and the IoT that controls security across campus.
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How to build resilience unintentionally?

The Presbyterian Church took over Armidale's Hilton private school, renamed it and in 1940 purchased an Armidale suburban block. This included a Federation residence, Birida, plus stables with feed loft and a few cottages. A two-storied classroom block was built.
Reminisces at a reunion of Old Girls from this era, fondly called the Birida Bunch, indicated a treasure trove of social history of boarding school life.
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Wakakirri’s new National Raising Awareness Award

In 2021, Muffin Break will be presenting a new award, the National Raising Awareness Award, recognizing a school for their Wakakirri Story-Dance and their community work to effectively raise awareness about an important community issue.
Natalie Brennan, General Manager of Muffin Break says, "We are firm believers in raising awareness of community issues and supporting schools to do so.”
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