Listening is essential for meaningful communication and is fundamental to healthy relationships, personal growth, and overall wellbeing. Its significance is widely acknowledged across various domains, including psychology. However, despite its recognised importance, there remains limited consensus on the defining features of high-quality listening.

This presentation draws on research published between 1957 and 2024 and identifies four core themes in the literature that characterize high-quality listening: (1) entering the speaker’s world through empathy and openness, (2) attending to the speaker’s nonverbal cues and emotional expressions, (3) demonstrating engagement through appropriate nonverbal body language, and (4) using verbal strategies such as questioning and summarising to clarify and validate the speaker’s message. The presentation will also explore how these characteristics are shaped by developmental, cultural, and neurodiverse factors. Finally, it will highlight how high-quality listening can enhance the quality of relationships by fostering trust, emotional closeness, and self-disclosure in children.

By synthesising key themes in the literature, this presentation aims to deepen understanding of high-quality listening and its contextual variability. It invites psychologists to adapt their listening strategies to meet the diverse needs of their clients and underscores the transformative power of listening in strengthening therapeutic and everyday relationships, particularly with children.

At the conclusion of this event, attendees will be able to:

1. Identify and describe four key characteristics of high-quality listening as defined in the literature.

2. Analyse how developmental, cultural, and neurodiverse factors influence the experience and expression of listening.

3. Apply high-quality listening strategies to enhance trust, emotional closeness, and self-disclosure in therapeutic and everyday relationships, particularly with children.

Burnout among special education teachers remains a persistent concern in both Australian and international contexts, contributing significantly to attrition and reduced well-being within the profession. Despite the volume of research in this area, the conceptualisation and study of contributing factors to burnout over time remain underexamined. This presentation outlines the rationale, design, and emerging patterns from a systematic literature review investigating how empirical studies published between 2010 and 2025 have framed burnout in terms of teacher-, student-, and school-level contributing factors.

The review employs a structured coding framework to classify empirical studies by publication year, geographic context, methodological approach, and thematic emphasis. Studies are also categorised according to the burnout scale employed (e.g., MBI-ES), population characteristics, and whether the primary focus is placed on intrapersonal, classroom-based, or systemic influences. A chi-square test of independence will be used to determine whether observed differences in thematic emphasis across time intervals are statistically significant. [Research is ongoing- completion date expected October 2025.]

Preliminary findings suggest a temporal shift in the literature, from early studies that predominantly focus on individual-level variables (e.g., coping strategies, emotional regulation, and self-efficacy) to more recent research that increasingly acknowledges systemic contributors, including workload intensification, inclusive education mandates, and leadership quality. This apparent transition in focus reflects a broader trend toward recognising burnout as a product of structural demands rather than solely individual vulnerability.

The forthcoming analysis aims to clarify whether this trend is statistically robust and to assess its implications for future intervention design. It is anticipated that findings will support calls for systems-level responses to burnout, such as workload reform, improved role clarity, and professional learning targeted at administrative and leadership staff. Ultimately, the project seeks to inform a more evidence-based research agenda and contribute to the development of sustainable, context-sensitive approaches to special education teacher well-being.

Presented in a condensed three-minute format, this Psych-in-3 presentation will deliver a concise overview of the study’s aims, methods, and emerging implications for research, practice, and policy.

1.At the conclusion of this event, attendees will be able to summarise how the framing of burnout in special education teachers has shifted over time within psychological research. This will enhance their understanding of burnout as a dynamic construct, measured through reflective discussion or CPD activities, with the expected outcome of identifying at least one structural contributor (e.g., inclusion policy, leadership climate).

2.Attendees will be able to distinguish between individual, student-related, and systemic contributors to special educator burnout. This broadens their conceptual framework and is measured by application in intervention planning or consultation, with the expected outcome of classifying burnout factors in case-based scenarios.

3. Attendees will be able to apply key findings to inform psychological support, consultation, or future research. Measured through self-reflection or CPD logs, the expected outcome is identification of one actionable change or research direction relevant to their professional role.

Divorce can represent a pivotal and often traumatic shift in a child’s world – a loss of family. The age of a child when their parents’ divorce has an impact on how they may respond and what they understand about what is happening. The physiology of stress can have dramatic effects on health and development because when threats to physiological or psychological wellbeing overwhelm one’s immediate resources to manage them, a cascade of neurochemical changes temporarily puts on hold the processes in the body that can be thought of as future orientated: immune system function, finding and digesting food, learning things that don’t matter right now.

This 60-minute presentation will focus on the impact of separation and divorce on children and adolescents, with a specific focus on brain functioning. The presentation serves as a developmental guide on what children and adolescents understand about parental separation and divorce, and it will include results from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and take a family law perspective. Specific contexts are considered including family violence. Beyond supporting parents, this presentation addresses barriers and constraints to attachment health in the family law system and provides participants with recommendations to encourage developmentally sound care and healthy attachment relationships whilst at the same time promote safety.

*Learn about how parental separation and divorce is understood at each developmental stage throughout childhood and adolescence.

*Learn about the possible impacts of separation and divorce on the brain functioning of children.

*Learn about legal concepts and processes when working with children and families going through family law proceedings.