Digital revolution or digital divide: Will rural teachers get a piece of the professional development pie?

In order to sustain the rural education community, access to high quality professional development opportunities must become a priority. Teachers in rural areas face many challenges in order to access professional learning equitable to their city counterparts. In the current climate, the Federal government of Australia is committed to initiatives that support the use of ICT in education. These include initiatives such as the Digital Education Revolution, including the National Broadband Network. This "revolution" includes the committal of $2.2 billion funding over six years from 2008 - 2013 which purports to bring substantial and meaningful change to teaching and learning in Australian schools. Of this funding, the Prime Minister (former Minister for Education), Julia Gillard, has committed $40 million of the total budget to ICT related professional development for teachers. But how will rural teachers ensure they get a piece of the PD pie? Access to professional learning is critical and isolation from colleagues, professional associations and support structures can affect the retention of teachers and in turn affect the sustainability of rural communities. This research paper describes the findings of the first phase of a study that investigates access to professional learning from rural and remote areas of Western Australia, the efficiencies of this approach including teacher perceptions and possible opportunities for improvement through the application of technologies. A survey instrument was administered and the results from104 principals and teachers within the Remote Teaching Service and the Country Teaching Program of the Department of Education and Training (WA) are discussed. Qualitative data was collected by semi-structured interviews and emailed questionnaires. Phase One findings highlight the principals and teachers? perceptions of their access to professional development opportunities, professional learning communities and their use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to bridge the gap

Enhancing professional learning for rural educators by rethinking connectedness

Impending changes in Australian education brings forth the expected transformation of teachers working in schools. Three key points for transforming Australian schools has been identified by Gillard (2008a) including the improvement of quality teaching, ensuring every child benefits and mandating transparency and accountability. A number of initiatives were considered to assist with such reform including the implementation of a Digital Education Revolution, the move to the Australian Curriculum and the implementation of a National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching. As these transformative initiatives are rolled out to teachers across Australia, the equitable access to PD to support all teachers, regardless of their geographical location, is in question. In line with the literature, the author proposes the concept of delivering PD and accessing PD from regional and remote areas be reconsidered. This research paper will outline the findings from the study including travel time being significant and impacting on teachers personal time; limited relief teachers impacting on access to PD; promotion and teacher registration being explicitly linked to PD; professional learning communities being valued but often limited by small staff numbers; professional learning conducted in the local context being preferred; professional learning established at the teacher and school level being desirable; teachers being confident in using technology and accessing PD online if required; and social cohesiveness being valued and often limited by isolation. Further this research has culminated in the development of a conceptual framework that would facilitate improving the amount and variety of professional learning available to regional and remote teachers.

Creating physical education in remote Australian schools: Overcoming the tyranny of distance through communities of practice

This paper reports on a qualitative case study undertaken in a remote part of Queensland, Australia. While there is some modest agreement about the capacity of contemporary information technologies to overcome the problems of schooling in areas of extreme remoteness, generally, children educated in such contexts are considered to be disadvantaged. The experiential areas of the curriculum, which often require specific teaching expertise, present the greatest challenge to teachers, and of these, physical education is perhaps the most problematic. This research reports on a case study of three remote Queensland multi-age primary (elementary) schools that come together to form a community of practice to overcome the problems of teaching physical education in such difficult circumstances. Physical education is constructed in these contexts by blurring the school and community boundaries, by contextualizing the subject content to make it relevant, and by adjusting the school day to accommodate potential physical education experiences. Each community gathers its collective experience to ensure the widest possible experiences are made available for the children. In doing so, the children develop a range of competencies that enable seamless transition to boarding high schools.

Rural first year university students: As engaged, aspirational and motivated as anyone – but different science ‘choices’ in year 12 and university

This paper reports on findings from the Interests and Recruitment in Science study, which explored the experiences of first year students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses in Australian universities. First year STEM students who went to school in rural or regional areas were as engaged, aspirational and motivated as their more metropolitan counterparts. However, they were less likely to have studied physics or advance mathematics, and more likely to have enrolled in an Agricultural or Environmental Science degree. The relationships between these results and broader contextual issues such as employment and Higher Education budgetary and policy settings are discussed.

Exploración y análisis de las políticas educativas relativas a la educación rural en Centroamérica : casos de Costa Rica y Nicaragua

Différents organismes internationaux se sont penchés sur l’école rurale des pays en émergence. La plupart de ces travaux de recherche montrent que ces écoles n’offrent pas une éducation adaptée au milieu dans lesquelles elles sont situées, du fait essentiellement qu’on y a implanté la structure administrative et pédagogique des écoles urbaines sans tenir compte des caractéristiques de la population infantile des zones rurales. Afin de tenter de remédier aux difficultés identifiées, ces organismes ont proposé diverses solutions ou préconisé des politiques adaptées à ce contexte particulier. Le but de cette recherche est d’étudier comment ces recommandations convergent-elles avec les politiques éducatives et dans le quotidien des écoles en milieu rural de deux pays de l’Amérique centrale, le Costa Rica et le Nicaragua. À cette fin, comme cadre d'analyse, nous avons établi six catégories : condition socio-économique, plan d'études et pédagogie, relation école et communauté, enseignants, technologie et finalement, gestion et gouvernance. Pour ce faire, nous analysons les recommandations globales formulées par diverses organisations internationales et d’autres organismes des pays développés à propos de l'éducation rurale. Nous comparons ensuite ces informations avec les décisions politiques prises ces dernières vingt années, dans les deux pays sélectionnés afin de favoriser le développement éducatif des zones rurales. Pour finir, nous observons sur le terrain le quotidien de quelques écoles rurales des deux pays retenus. En partant de l’hypothèse qu’il existe suffisamment d’information et de recommandations permettant l’élaboration des politiques éducatives appropriées pour améliorer les conditions des écoles rurales, le travail présente une analyse multiniveaux (recommandations globales, politiques nationales et pratiques scolaires) en établissant la convergence ou la divergence dans chacune des catégories. Les principaux résultats de la recherche démontrent qu'il existe une convergence entre les pratiques scolaires et les politiques éducatives émises par les pays étudiés, avec quelques exceptions. Quant à la convergence entre les recommandations globales et les politiques émises par ces pays, on ne peut pas parler de convergence de façon générale. La recherche propose l'élaboration de profil de politiques nationales pour chaque pays, en fonction de la manière par laquelle ils abordent la problématique de l'éducation rurale : soit par l’assignation des ressources pour étendre les services éducatifs normalisés pour tous les enfants, ou en produisant des politiques focalisées, créant des programmes spécifiques, faisant remarquer la différence du monde rural.

El estado de la educación rural en América Latina y en África.

Es necesario tomar en serio los procesos de educación rural en ambos continentes, para lo cual sería muy importante que, más allá de las políticas nacionales, pero sin prescindir de ellas, la Comunidad Internacional y sus grandes organizaciones, se empeñasen seriamente en afrontar los problemas de una planificación estratégica para la educación rural, sin excluir Asia y que movilizase todo tipo de voluntades y recursos. Para entender y afrontar la búsqueda de soluciones a la educación en el mundo fue trascendental el Forum Mundial sobre educación celebrado de Dakar. El objetivo de 155 países reunidos fue revisar los compromisos de la comunidad internacional para la reducción del analfabetismo y el acceso universal a una educación de calidad. La fecha fijada par ese gran cambio fue el año 2000. Aunque ya en la reunión de 1995 los gobiernos tuvieron que reconocer que no se caminaba a buen paso y la pospusieron para el 2015. sin embargo, los principales organismos reunidos en torno a la campaña mundial por la educación nos advierten de que si las cosas siguen así, llegaremos a esta última fecha igual ¿Qué ha pasado? ¿Es un problema de costes? No. Los gobiernos tienen o podrían tener dinero si corrigiesen algunos errores o tendencias perversas de los recursos suficientes para hacer frente al gasto que supone la educación básica universal. Esto es, el acceso a la escuela primaria de todos los menores entre seis y doce años y la alfabetización de los adultos. Pero también podría si se invierten las tendencias actuales, ir más allá y apostar por la formación generalizada, elemento esencial para el desarrollo duradero de la humanidad. Es una cuestión de voluntad política.

Preparing pre-service teachers for rural teaching: a new approach

In Australia, recruitment of high quality teachers is seen as critical for the future of rural education provision. A national inquiry into rural and remote education conducted in 2000 by HREOC supported this claim stating that there is a crisis for rural schools attracting new teachers and blamed teacher education for not doing enough to equip beginning teachers with the skills and knowledge needed for teaching in rural and remote Australia. Although state governments provide financial incentives for potential graduates to embark on a rural practicum placement, this incentive does not appear sufficient. There is an urgent need in teacher education to consider  alternative ways to generate interest in a rural teaching career. This paper describes a pre-service initiative between the metropolitan Burwood campus of Deakin University and a Victorian rural school community. The initiative was designed to enable a cohort of 45 city-based student teachers studying a particular unit to better understand rural issues, pedagogy and ultimately to foster interest in country teaching.

Leadership for rural school community partnerships

This paper presents a model for examining effective leadership for rural school community partnerships, derived from Australian research supported by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. The research team investigated effective school community partnerships in five different Australian rural locations. Four government and one independent school featured in the study. Partnership effectiveness was confirmed by seeking advice from a range of experts including State, Commonwealth, independent school and Catholic education authorities, as well as rural education professionals. The particular focus of the study was on the community outcomes of such partnerships.

The model is consistent with, but further develops, earlier partnership models. It uses the leadership process, rather than the leader, as the unit of analysis. The model outlines a five-stage process of partnership development: trigger, initiation, development, maintenance and sustainability. While the stages of the process appear to be consistent across study sites, the way in which the model is implemented differs according to context, with factors such as the level of maturity of the school community partnership influencing the process. The flexibility of the model, in terms of better understanding the contextualised nature of educational leadership, suggests it has broader application beyond rural school community partnerships.

The rural practicum : preparing a quality teacher workforce for rural and regional Australia

Communities play a critical role in supporting pre-service teachers during rural and regional professional experience. This support, coupled with access to teacher educators and university resources, appears to positively influence graduate attitudes toward taking up a rural appointment. These are among the key findings to emerge from open-ended responses within 263 surveys completed for the Rethinking Teacher Education for Rural and Regional Sustainability—Renewing Teacher Education for Rural and Regional Australia project (TERRAnova). The national surveys, collected annually from 2008-2010, monitored the impact of state-based financial incentives designed to promote rural and regional professional experience. Findings discussed in this article have implications for teacher educators and rural school leaders as they work in partnership with communities to support pre-service teachers on rural and regional practicum.

Graduate teacher preparation for rural schools in Victoria and Queensland

Graduate teachers' preparedness for working in rural settings are mediated by the development of pedagogical expertise, professional engagement with parents and the community, and broader notions of preparation to teach in rural contexts. The Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education (SETE) project is a four-year longitudinal study tracking teacher education graduates in Queensland and Victoria to investigate the effectiveness of their programs in equipping them to meet the learning needs of students in a diverse range of school settings. A sub-set of the SETE data was examined to explore graduate teacher preparation for rural schools, specifically the authors analysed 1,539 point-in-time survey responses (April 2013) and findings from a case study exploring two teachers' transitions from teacher education into teaching positions at a rural primary school in Victoria. The case study is read iteratively with survey analysis to grapple with the issues associated with graduate teacher preparation for rural schools.

Pedagogy of the rural: implications of size on conceptualisations of rural

This paper proposes a concept of Pedagogy of the Rural that draws together current rural education theory and practice to illustrate the complexities of rural space and place often overlooked in teacher education more broadly. We firstly examine notions of size, and then we explore how this impacts on the ways in which teachers in rural locations are positioned in terms of their identity. Finally, we provide a way forward for valuing rural contexts for what they bring to teacher identities beyond traditional deficit positionings dominant in current discourses on rural education.

Pedagogy of the rural: teaching and learning for rural futures?

Pedagogy of the Rural illustrates the complexities of rural space and considers some of the underlying assumptions, ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ about rural education and teaching in a complicated and dynamic policy context. Pedagogy of the Rural offers an alternative to current teacher education practice – it is responsive to policy demands as well as local conditions and traditions, and has a futures orientation, in that it provides a way forward for valuing rural contexts for what they bring to teacher identities beyond traditional deficit positionings dominant in current discourses on rural. The authors examine notions of size and how this impacts on the ways in which beginning teachers in rural locations are positioned in terms of identity at a macro, meso and micro level. They also examine what it means to ‘be rural’ and use Pedagogy of the Rural to conceptualise rural understandings as a pedagogy that is not a pedagogy ‘for’ or ‘about’ but rather ‘of’ the rural. Complexities of the Pedagogy of the Rural are understood through Harré’s (2004) positioning theory, Baudrillard’s (1983) notion of simulation and simulacra and Lefebvre’s (2009) arguments around space and economic geographies. The interrelationship of place, space and identity unify teachers’ understandings of who they (or we) are, and are becoming, in a specific time and geographical location, raising questions about: subjectivity - who we are; power - what we can do; and desire- who we might become (Harré, Moghaddam, Cairnie, Rothbart, & Sabat, 2009), and the influence of personal and professional histories and what rural brings to our pedagogy within this.