Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Audible, Castbox, Podbean, iHeartRadio, or wherever else you get your podcasts!

This episode we’re speaking with Dr Jennifer Buckingham. Jen is Executive Director of the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation in the NSW Department of Education. She has been an active participant in the national debate on education for more than two decades. After completing a PhD on reading instruction and intervention in 2014, Jennifer decided to devote her career to bridging the research-to-practice gap and reduce preventable illiteracy. She started the Five from Five project in 2015, at The Centre for Independent Studies, to provide free literacy resources to teachers and parents and to provide a platform to promote better policy. Five from Five has delivered free professional learning to thousands of teachers and has tens of thousands of visitors to its website and social media channels each month.

Jen has provided advice on policy and curriculum to federal and state governments and education agencies, including the new Australian Curriculum and NSW Literacy Syllabus, and has worked closely with a number of government and non-government systems and schools to develop high impact literacy teaching and assessment.

Her research on initial teacher education led to the amendment of the initial teacher education accreditation standards in 2020. She regularly speaks at conferences and has published widely, including co-editing and co-authoring the book Effective Instruction in Reading and Spelling which is now a prescribed or recommended text in teacher education courses in universities in Australia, Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Jen is a board member of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and an Adjunct Associate Professor at La Trobe University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW and a 2022 Churchill Fellow. Her Churchill report is called An investigation of literacy instruction and policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Churchill Trust Australia, 2024). And that is what we are talking about today.

To get a summary of this episode, sign up at www.patreon.com/errr  

The ERRR podcast can also be listened to on Spotify, apple podcasts, and all other podcasting apps. 

Links/resources mentioned in the show

This episode of the ERRR podcast is brought to you by the Explicit Mathematics Program. The EMP spans Foundation to Year 2 and provides teachers and schools with everything needed to run a high quality, rigorous, and evidence informed mathematics program. From lessons to assessments, daily reviews to student workbooks, we’ve got you covered. Find out more at https://explicitmathematicsprogram.com/

This episode of the ERRR podcast is brought to you by Catalyst. Catalyst transforms students' lives through learning by developing excellent teachers and Leaders through evidence-based professional learning programs. Find out more at https://catalyst.cg.catholic.edu.au/

Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.