Academic anxiety is increasingly recognised as relevant to students’ learning and emotional wellbeing. Although research has documented links between academic anxiety and academic performance, anxiety is often examined separately from academic intervention research and is not consistently considered alongside academic outcomes. Drawing on a program of research that includes two meta-analyses and studies examining relations between academic anxiety and academic outcomes, this presentation synthesises evidence on the effects of school-based academic interventions on both academic achievement and academic anxiety in primary and secondary students.

Evidence indicates that while academic interventions reliably improve achievement, they do little to reduce academic anxiety. Reviews suggest that academic anxiety may need to be addressed more directly. Research on anxiety and reading also shows that anxiety varies across different reading outcomes (e.g., reading accuracy and fluency, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension) and across students with differing reading achievement (e.g., higher vs lower achieving readers).

Implications for inclusive classroom practice and directions for future research are discussed. Overall, the findings suggest that academic anxiety should be considered alongside instruction and academic outcomes, particularly when students continue to experience difficulty despite receiving academic support. More broadly, this work highlights the complexity of relations between anxiety and learning, including variation associated with the type of anxiety and the severity of academic difficulty. By integrating evidence from intervention research and studies of anxiety–achievement relations, this presentation contributes to a more nuanced, research-informed understanding of academic anxiety within the context of effective, inclusive instruction.

Sarah Fishstrom is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education - College of Education at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She has over 15 years of experience across K–12 and university contexts, with a focus on improving reading outcomes for students with learning difficulties.

Dr Fishstrom’s research explores the intersection of anxiety and learning difficulties, with particular attention to reading difficulties and reading anxiety. A former National Board-Certified teacher in New York City Public Schools, she brings a decade of classroom experience to her academic work and is committed to advancing evidence-based reading instruction while also supporting teacher and student wellbeing.

In addition to her research, Dr Fishstrom supports pre-service and in-service teachers in building knowledge and confidence in instructional practices. Her work emphasises integrating academic instruction with social–emotional considerations, particularly anxiety, as well as culturally responsive reading practices for diverse classrooms. She recently developed well-being modules for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa College of Education and currently collaborates with the Hawai‘i Department of Education on a train-the-trainer initiative to support adolescent students with reading difficulties.

Through her teaching, research, and professional collaborations, including international partnerships, Dr Fishstrom is committed to advancing inclusive, evidence-informed educational practices that support students in reaching their academic potential.

Learning to read is a cultural invention that is cognitively demanding and must be explicitly taught (Castles et al., 2018; Dehaene, 2009; Geary, 2008; Seidenberg, 2017). Whether children learn to read is therefore highly dependent on the quality of instruction.  While most teachers use phonics, effectiveness varies according to their instructional language and consistent verbal routines (Archer & Hughes, 2011; Roberts et al., 2019), how they direct attention to sounds, blend and segment words (Gonzalez-Frey & Ehri, 2020), and provide opportunities to respond (Becker, 1992; Sayeski et al., 2019).  A reading Daily Review is one effective strategy teachers can employ to accelerate this journey through fast-paced, structured reteaching and retrieval of essential knowledge. Student engagement is sustained with frequent choral, or partner responses ensuring participation and immediate feedback (Hollingsworth & Ybarra, 2018).  This practical session will focus on the design and delivery of an effective reading Daily Review including what to put in and when to take it out, structuring reviews, and videos illustrating exemplary practice from teachers in a range of settings.

Dr Lorraine Hammond AM is Professor of Early Years Literacy at The University of Notre Dame in Fremantle, Western Australia.  She has worked and researched in the areas of early literacy, high impact instructional strategies, including explicit teaching and learning difficulties since 1990. Awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2002, Lorraine was recognised by an Australian Government National Teaching Award (2016) for outstanding tertiary teaching and in 2017 by the Australian Council for Educational Leadership for her work in schools promoting high impact instruction. In 2019, Lorraine received an Order of Australia (AM) for her significant contribution to tertiary education and the community. Lorraine has designed tertiary units of work on structured literacy and explicit instruction, including the first post-graduate unit on the Science of Reading Instruction in Australia. Since 2017, Lorraine has developed and presented professional learning on evidence-based literacy strategies for the Kimberley Schools Project in the north of Western Australia in regional and remote community schools as well as the Catholic Archdioceses of Adelaide, Broken Bay, Canberra-Goulburn, Melbourne and Tasmania.  Lorraine has also worked extensively with the government and Independent school systems across Australia. In 2024, Lorraine was inaugurated into the Western Australian Women’s Hall of Fame for her work teaching evidence-based reading instruction in schools and universities. Her unwavering dedication continues to shape literacy education, ensuring that effective, research-backed teaching methods are accessible to all students, regardless of their background or location.

The brain has a simple job: to keep a person alive. While we may assume the brain's purpose is to think, it must first scan for threats and search for signals of belonging. Before it can engage with new ideas, it needs to know it's safe. Before it can take risks, it needs to know it belongs. Only then is it truly available for learning.

In this presentation, we'll follow the progression of the brain's priorities—from survival to safety to belonging to learning—and examine what each stage looks like in the design of everyday classroom experiences. Drawing on cognitive science, psychology, and a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, we'll look at how intentional shifts in classroom design can have an outsized impact on students' ability to engage, think, and thrive.

We'll look at small but significant moves that help students feel oriented and regulated, including reducing unnecessary threat and unpredictability through parasympathetic activation and consistent routines. We'll examine how belonging is built through invitation and a focus on strengths, and what it looks like when students feel genuinely recognised and valued. And we'll work through practical strategies for preventing cognitive overload: using visuals to anchor information, chunking complex tasks into manageable steps, and introducing novelty in ways that spark engagement without overwhelming working memory.

Thriving isn't the reward for learning. It's the prerequisite.

Aaron Lanou (he/him) is an inclusive education coach who works with schools through consultation, professional development, and workshops to help educators better reach all students - especially autistic and neurodivergent learners.

Aaron's work starts with a simple but powerful premise: the problem is rarely the kid. Grounded in Universal Design for Learning, he helps educators examine the environment, the demands, and the expectations as the starting point for helping students succeed in school. He supports teachers to design instruction with clarity and structure, and to create scaffolds that support students’ specific needs: concrete visual supports, focused graphic organisers, and intentional executive functioning tools. Deeply committed to centering disabled perspectives, he has learned from and alongside his disabled students and regularly collaborates with autistic colleagues and presenters.

As a member of Carol Gray's Team Social Stories, Aaron delivers official Social Stories workshops and collaborates with Carol and the team to continually refine the Social Stories philosophy and approach. He has partnered with the Danish school system for over a decade, supporting schools and municipalities across Denmark with inclusive practices. And as a member of the Delta Air Lines Advisory Board on Disability and Accessible Travel, his inclusion lens extends well beyond the classroom.

Aaron's work is rooted in years of direct experience in the field. As Executive Director of the Nest Support Project at NYU, he led the nation's largest inclusion program for autistic students, the NYC Public Schools' Nest Program. A former special education teacher, he has also served as adjunct faculty at Hunter College and NYU, teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on instructional methods for students with learning disabilities and complex support needs.

Psychosocial disability arises from mental illness and can impact people at all life stages. It often has a significant impact on educational achievement and progress which can have long-lasting impacts on social inclusion even when the immediate symptoms of mental ill-health are not acute.

This presentation will begin by focusing on the individual experience and journey of mental illness and psychosocial disability in the context of K-12 education and the implications of educational inclusion or exclusion for individuals and their families. It will then go on to consider education as part of an ecosystem of supports that extend beyond education, which must work in a cohesive way to support individuals.

Taking this micro (individual) and macro (systemic) lens will help educators to link the personal impact of mental illness for students with broader systems thinking.

Jen Smith-Merry is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow and Professor of Health and Social Policy in the Sydney School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney. From 2018-2024 she was Director of the Centre for Disability Research and Policy, a multi-disciplinary centre whose mission is to make life better for people with disability by translating research to policy and practice.

Her research focuses on disability and mental health policy, particularly in relation to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Jen works closely with people with lived experience of disability and has a strong interest in critical theoretical approaches to policy analysis. She has undertaken consultancy work in disability and education for the NSW Department of Education and currently sits on the NSW Skills Plan reference group.

Prior to joining the School of Health Sciences in 2011 she was Research Fellow in mental health policy at the University of Edinburgh and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy.

Jen is co-editor of Palgrave Studies in Disability in Asia and the Pacific.

Schools are not machines to be optimised, but ecosystems to be cultivated. In every classroom and staffroom, learning is shaped by complex interactions between knowledge, relationships, beliefs, emotions, constraints and culture. When students experience vulnerability, stress or disengagement, the challenge for educators is not to lower academic expectations, but to build the relational and pedagogical conditions in which all learners can participate, belong and grow.

This presentation explores a relational approach to learning, teaching and leadership, drawing on the work of the Teacher Growth Team and its focus on context-responsive professional learning, instructional leadership and teacher capacity building. It will examine how schools can strengthen both psychosocial and academic wellbeing by attending to the mindsets, conversations and systems that shape daily practice.

We will consider how teacher change actually happens; not through isolated strategies or compliance-driven initiatives, but through trust, shared inquiry, disciplined dialogue and collective responsibility. Participants will be invited to reflect on the “depth of talk” in their own contexts, the social conditions that enable professional growth, and the ways leaders can support teachers to sustain connection, authority and care in complex classrooms.

Grounded in theory, practice and lived experience, the session will offer practical frameworks for building coaching cultures that prize both teacher wellbeing and student learning. It will highlight approaches such as collaborative lesson cycles, dialogical mentoring and coaching, scaffolded engagement with evidence, and the development of professional networks that extend learning beyond individual classrooms.

Ultimately, this presentation argues that thriving together requires more than individual resilience. It calls for school cultures where belonging, agency and academic challenge are held together, and where the growth of students, teachers and leaders is understood as deeply interconnected.

Eddie Woo is a teacher, instructional leader and Professor of Practice - Mathematics Education at The University of Sydney. Through his classroom teaching, Wootube lessons and leadership of the NSW Department of Education’s Teacher Growth Team, he works to strengthen the relationships, mindsets and professional cultures that enable both students and teachers to thrive. Eddie’s work focuses on evidence-informed practice, teacher professional development and the design of learning environments where academic challenge, belonging and care are held together. Named Australia’s Local Hero in 2018, Eddie is also an internationally published author, TED speaker and media presenter known for making complex ideas accessible, practical and deeply human.

This workshop invites teachers to prioritise ‘Joy’ as a transformative professional practice that strengthens both teacher wellbeing and inclusive classroom practice. The session positions joy not as an individual personality trait, but as an intentional, relational, and sustainable practice that can be nurtured within the everyday realities of schools and classrooms.

Aligned with the conference focus on bridging theory and classroom practice, participants will examine how teacher joy directly influences engagement, resilience, and the capacity to design learning environments that respond to diverse student needs. Through practical reflection activities and shared examples, participants will explore how joy centred practices can support inclusive pedagogies, reduce burnout, and enhance professional efficacy when working with all students.

The workshop will provide actionable strategies for embedding joy into daily routines, relationships, and decision making, at both classroom and team levels, without adding to workload. Participants will leave with a practical framework for nurturing their own wellbeing while strengthening inclusive practices that enable every student to succeed.

Associate Professor Cathy Little is an educator with over 30 years’ experience across early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary education, specialising in inclusive and special education. She has taught for many years across a range of school and early childhood service types and brings a deep, practice‑based understanding of inclusive learning. Cathy currently lectures in Special and Inclusive Education at the University of Sydney and is Deputy Head of School (Education) in the Sydney School of Education & Social Work. Her research and professional work focus on autism and neurodiversity, positive behaviour support and building inclusive practices for young people, working closely with schools to support all learners.

Dr Olivia Karaolis holds a degree in acting, a master’s degree in early childhood intervention, a PhD and a diploma in Puppet Therapy. Her research interests focus on the inclusion of children and young people with disabilities in education through the application of the creative arts as a pedagogy to address ableism, inequity, and to promote joy. Olivia is a Senior Lecturer in Special and Inclusive Education at the University of Notre Dame. She has extensive experience teaching children and young people with disabilities in Australia and in the USA. She was an Inclusion Consultant for the Los Angeles Unified School District, part of the Early Start Interdisciplinary Assessment team for the California Department of Disability and implemented professional learning with the support of the Kennedy Centre, VSA. She is a member of the ECEERA Council of Reviewers.

Positive, inclusive and trauma-informed learning environments are the foundation for providing students with positive psychosocial and academic wellbeing. The challenge for schools and teachers is often recognising simple, existing frameworks with which to build these environments amongst an already busy workload and schedule of competing interests. This workshop will look at ‘on the ground’ strategies that can assist in building safe, positive and inclusive learning environments within your school. The key themes that will be explored will be Universal Design through Tier 1 interventions and PBL, relational pedagogy with a specific focus on teacher-student relationships and the function of behaviour, regulation before cognition, and identify-affirming practice that recognises neurodiversity is a difference, not a deficit. Delegates will have the opportunity to map these key areas into an action plan to implement in their own school following the conference.

Andrew Krisenthal is Deputy Principal - Inclusion and Support at Cambridge Park High School in Western Sydney. He has worked with the University of Sydney for the past 5 years delivering the Positive Behaviour for Learning course within the Inclusive Education pathway. Inclusion and disability support is a passionate area of interest alongside supporting staff with relatable strategies and practical ideas to enhance their own practice and build supports and interventions for students.