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Trauma-informed practice in education applies neuroscientific knowledge of the profound impact of early childhood trauma on learning and emphasises the central role of the student-teacher relationship in recovery. In adopting trauma-informed understandings, teachers are required to change their current practices and strengthen their relationships with their students. This often requires a reassessment of the beliefs and values informing their practice and relationships and insight into alternate ways of responding. While recommendations in the trauma-informed education literature emphasise the need for schools to support teachers in this deeply reflective work, it is rarely included in implementation practices. This study trials a form of critical reflection, the Reflective Circle Education Model (RCEM), with a group of six teachers in a school in Victoria Australia over a school year. Teacher perspectives on the value of the RECM model to support trauma-informed practice are then discussed.

School closures and the move to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed teaching and learning in Australian schools. Educators experienced personal and professional challenges as they rapidly responded to the needs of their school communities and managed their own emotional reactions. Eleven educators at two Victorian schools in areas of low socioeconomic status discussed in focus groups the impact of school closures and explored their perceptions of responses from leaders and colleagues who supported their wellbeing. While naming the significance of uncertainty, constant change and increased workloads, these educators acted creatively to ensure their students had access to specifically developed learning materials to suit their needs. Educators demonstrated that they could use existing reflective structures that fostered mutual support to sustain their wellbeing and create supportive environments for themselves and their wider school communities in times of crisis, as well as remain open to sometimes-surprising learning opportunities.

Educators are involved in complex, interpersonal and emotionally demanding work on a daily basis. In many schools this includes working with students with extreme and challenging behaviours, many of whom come from traumatic backgrounds. This work requires educators to have high levels of self-awareness, emotional understanding, empathy and calm. Despite this, limited attention has been paid to processes which might support the educator in the development and strengthening of these interpersonal aspects of their work. We report on the results from initial interviews with teachers and principals in three low SES schools in regional Victoria and introduce a model of critical reflection (Reflective Circles) adapted for an education context. Findings highlight the challenges educators currently experience and their reasons for participating in Reflective Circles.

Despite many claimed benefits, teacher collaboration remains patchy, under-theorised, and resisted. At the same time, new large teaching spaces offer teachers opportunities to teach in teams within and across school subjects to enhance teacher and student learning. In this paper we aim to contribute to theorising the nature and means of this form of collaboration, drawing on both relevant literature and analyses of three case studies of team teaching. We found that team teaching (a) is enabled and constrained by multiple contextual factors, and (b) potentially changes and enhances the nature and scope of teacher professional learning.

Teachers are faced with an increasingly complex environment in which they need significant support to foster the classroom climates their students benefit from. Developing a critical understanding of the school and broader social context can foster awareness of the 'bigger picture' that influences the school community individually and collectively. This article explores research in three schools in Victoria, Australia that used a reflective circles model to explore challenging classroom and school experiences. Separate groups of 4-6 teachers or principals volunteered to participate in the reflective circles with each circle taking about 1-1.5 hours. The initial findings from interviews with nine teacher participants and three principals affirm the value of the circles for generating significant mutual support, awareness of other perspectives and strategies and building confidence and capacity to seek change. What emerged suggests the value of a peer supervision model based on critically reflective practice to support, enable, empower and foster a sense of agency for teachers and principals.

This project focused on 45 Indigenous students who attended most often (90-100%) at an Australian urban primary school to identify factors that facilitate high attendance. We analysed student records and to provide student voice, an Indigenous Worker in the school conducted a student questionnaire. Student responses showed friendships, relationships, family stability and resilience were important contributors for high attendance. Administrative data revealed poverty was the only almost universally shared trait. Common characteristics among students were identified at cohort-level. At student-level, no combination or single trait applied to every high-attending student. They showed great diversity. The study school's attendance strategies included increasing cultural inclusion and support for students living in poverty, which positively impacted many students' attendance, although not all. A personalised approach was also required. An Indigenous Worker identified individual student's attendance barriers and tailored solutions. If school-level strategies are ineffective for all students, strategies and policies designed for all of Australia's Indigenous students will also affect only some of the population. Without a personalised approach, "Closing the Gap" attendance strategies were limited in reach, and ultimately success. Refreshing the "Closing the Gap" strategy now provides opportunities for attendance strategies to include personalised approaches.

Formal primary and secondary school education for all students should provide a pathway to overcome inequality and disadvantage. Logically, attending school regularly and often during the compulsory years of school provides the best prospects to achieve educational success and enhance post-school opportunities, particularly for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. However, recent research of Indigenous students living in remote regions of Australia suggests school attendance frequency has little, or no correlation with academic success or failure. Our study of a disadvantaged urban school population also showed no attendance and achievement relationship at student-level for Indigenous students (or non-Indigenous peers). The findings of this study highlight the generally accepted relationship between attendance and achievement does not apply universally for all students. Many factors have potential to influence for Indigenous students' capacity for educational achievement. We need further research to ensure Indigenous education policy and strategies for improved student outcomes target what matters most.

Urban Indigenous students' school attendance and factors contributing to annual attendance rates are relatively unknown, and yet almost 80% of the Indigenous population resides in non-remote regions. Our longitudinal study evaluated an urban primary school where Indigenous families preferentially enrolled their children because they recognised it supported their children in ways that celebrated Indigenous culture and ameliorated school-related symptoms of poverty. Indigenous students' attendance influences appeared in phases: Indigenous status, poverty, and family characteristics, until significant influences for attendance were exhausted. While Indigenous students' mean attendance rates were bounded between 80% and 90%, and below non-Indigenous peers' attendance in each year, slight improvement occurred, even as poverty universally pervaded the Indigenous community. As poverty among non-Indigenous students increased, their mean attendance also declined below the 90% national benchmark.

Indigenous students, a subgroup of the Australian student population, produce poorer educational outcomes and continue to produce persistently lower attendance rates than non-Indigenous peers. Currently, governments collect and monitor student attendance as an indicator of students' educational achievement and a key performance measure of schools for attributing school funding, and to inform future educational policy and practice. Researching urban Indigenous students' attendance, we sought comparative attendance data from previous research and government collections. Reaching back 30 years, the investigation identified a lack of complete, valid data with verified integrity at all levels of data aggregation, providing researchers with sources of often incomplete, unsuitable, or compromised attendance data. While Australian schools collect students' attendance every school day, the national attendance collection continues to collect and aggregate part-year attendance samples. Improvements in the national attendance collection are urgently needed from which robust analyses and evaluations can accurately inform policy and practice.

This research explores school attendance rates within the steadily growing population of Victorian urban Indigenous students and challenges for realising high attendance levels. Poverty, pervasive throughout the urban Indigenous community, presents circumstances where it once, and could still, erode regular school attendance. We report one socio-educationally disadvantaged school, teaching a significant Indigenous student population that has mitigated the influence of socio-economic disadvantage. Their Indigenous students' attendance surpasses the attendance of most Indigenous students and almost matches that of their non-Indigenous school peers. Success has been achieved through community partnerships, supported by a Koorie Education Worker, and embedded Indigenous culture. However, in the final primary school year, Indigenous students' attendance declines. This signals an earlier commencement of attendance decline that occurs in later years, often resulting in early attrition. As the school's targeted strategies and programmes have improved all students' attendance, so the attendance gap for Indigenous students persists.