Australian and International Journal of Rural Education

Book Review

Dipane Joseph Hlalele — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

A book review of Cornish and Taole's 2021 book, Perspectives on Multigrade Teaching: Research and Practice in South Africa and Australia.

What Does a Quality Education Look Like in Rural Schools?

John Guenther; Melyssa Fuqua — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

This issue of the Australian and International Journal of Rural Education features articles that describe and critically analyse rural education, the common thread being 'What Does a Quality Education Look Like in Rural Schools?'. The education settings discussed include Australia, Czechia, Iraq, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania, and the United States. The studies presented reflect the huge diversity of rural schooling and the many factors that work to support quality education. What does quality rural education look like? It looks like teachers who have a strong connection to place, with strategies for teaching that connect with students from the place. It looks like teachers who are flexible and open to learning. It looks like a supportive system. It looks attractive to parents. It looks like contextualised learning. It looks like parents and communities engaged in their children's learning at school. It is potentially transformative. It looks like a workforce that has good access to professional learning options. It looks like good governance, with local Elders and community leaders involved and driving a vision for education. It looks like strong peer relationships, and a culturally safe learning environment. It does not necessarily look like the narrowly defined metrics that are often used to define success or the deficits that are too often described in association with rural education.

Researching School Engagement of Aboriginal Students and Their Families from Regional and Remote Areas Project

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

Over the last few years, attendance rates in remote schools have fallen, and Year 12 completions have also dropped. We are not sure why this is, though events like COVID-19, floods and other natural disasters have not made it easy. The case study presented here was part of a bigger project that sought to understand what people in remote schools and the communities they are in think makes a difference to attendance and Year 12 completion. This case study outlines the findings specific to one of the four case study sites, namely, Yipirinya School on Arrernte Country in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). The overarching finding of the study indicates that attendance alone cannot be the primary measure of school success; rather, engagement needs to be the focus. To tease out this finding, the three main themes: relationships, purpose, and cultural safety, are identified as factors that made a difference at Yipirinya School.

Investigating Remote School Attendance, Retention and Engagement

Rhonda Oliver, Helen CD McCarthy, Lissy Jackson — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

Predating the introduction of the Closing the Gap strategy in 2007, First Nation students’ attendance, retention and engagement in remote schools has been a concern for educators and successive governments. The following paper describes a case study—one part of a large Australian federally funded ‘Emerging Priorities Program’ project that sought to examine these issues. Specifically, it explores those factors that contribute to either exacerbating the decline in attendance, engagement or retention or lead to improved outcomes. The case study was undertaken at a Vocational Education and Training boarding school catering for Aboriginal students, mostly from remote areas of Western Australia. Students travel considerable distance to attend the school, often because of their family connections to the school. In this study students from one of the English classes became co-researchers in the project, providing input and collaborating at every stage of the research process.The findings indicate the need to adopt a strength-based approach when teaching remote students. This can be achieved through positive relationships between educators and students, which, in turn, is developed through cultural awareness and the use of community members and Aboriginal educators as role models and human resources for schools.

Front Cover and Table of Contents for Volume 34, Issue 1, March 2024

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

Front cover and table of contents for Volume 34, Issue 1, March 2024

Thank you to all authors who contributed photographs for the front cover.

These images reflect the diversity of rural educational contexts where research is conducted.

Don’t Stand Up in a Hammock

Alison Willis, Sharon Louth — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

This ethnographic case study investigates the professional, locational and cultural understandings teachers need when beginning regional, rural, and remote teaching and living. Drawing from the experiences of recently graduated early career teachers in regional, rural, and remote teaching positions, the study sought to identify key learnings and strategies for surviving and thriving in regional, rural, and remote communities with the aim of better preparing pre-service teachers for placements and future employment in these locations. Most early career teachers in this study would recommend regional, rural, and remote teaching positions to pre-service teachers, describing the experience as rewarding, challenging and professionally developing. The importance of building relationships and immersing oneself in community were salient in the data. Analysis revealed a need for pre-determinations in five areas when preparing for RRR teaching positions: social (building networks and making friends), geographical (exploring the local area and getting involved in community), emotional (positive mindset and getting out of your comfort zone), personal (healthy habits and resilience), and cultural (understanding community). There is an evident opportunity to help pre-service teachers prepare for regional, rural, and remote experiences by considering these five pre-determinations.

The Importance of Context in a Global World

Robyn Henderson, Sazan M. Mandalawi — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

Global education is often framed in terms of standardised testing that makes comparisons across nations. This is particularly evident with international measures like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in member countries. Images on the PISA website provide representations of education that seem to clash with some of the contexts where we have conducted research. This prompted an investigation into educators’ talk about local contextual realities, and how—or whether—they were impacted by global calls for quality education. The study focused on three different educational programs: education for adolescent girls in a refugee camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, school education in a western Queensland rural/remote town in Australia, and the Migrant Education Program in rural Illinois in the United States. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and field observations. Following data analysis, three case study narratives were constructed. A final step of analysis identified four shared pillars that made learning in rural and remote areas impactful and effective: context relevance, educators’ openness to learning, flexibility of teaching/learning approaches, and responsiveness to learners’ needs. The data demonstrated that the educators had a broader picture—national or global—in mind, but their main aim was to provide learning opportunities that were responsive, flexible and contextually appropriate to their location.

Transforming Rural Teaching

Blandina Daniel Mazzuki, Sarah Vicent Chiwamba — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

This qualitative study examines preparation of pre-service teachers for altering rural teaching through transformative curriculum and pedagogy. The study gathered the perspectives of 45 participants belonging to two universities in Tanzania, namely University of Dar es Salaam (Dar es Salaam University College of Education) and Sokoine University of Agriculture School of Education. The findings indicate that geographically isolated rural schools are associated with deficits resulting in poor quality of teaching and learning. Further, the findings establish that teacher educators and pre-service teachers are not open to transforming rural teaching. This has implications for the effectiveness of university teacher education provided. To develop pre-service teachers’ openness to transforming rural teaching, there is a need for transformative curriculum and pedagogy in teacher education. A transformative curriculum should include diverse knowledge of teaching contexts and be implemented through critical dialogue and reflective pedagogy.

Attractive Rural Schools in Czechia

Dominik Dvořák, Silvie Rita Kučerová, Ladislav Zilcher, Zdeněk Svoboda — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

Current policies in education that support school choice can be a threat but also an opportunity for rural schools that are often at risk of closure or amalgamation/consolidation. Studies from Western Europe found two types of schools using the ‘capitals’ of the rural environment in different ways: ‘community’ and ‘magnet’ schools. Our mixed-methods study enriches the discussion on successful rural schools, considering both the school leadership strategies and the situation in the local quasi-market of schools in a post-socialist central European country, Czechia. In the first step, using data from all Czech rural elementary schools, we identified schools that were in demand by local and out-of-catchment-area students. We performed a detailed qualitative analysis of 13 selected case schools and their local quasi-markets in the second step. The usefulness of the analytical distinction between rural schools oriented towards the needs of the local community and those that use rural capital to meet the needs of liberal middle-class families is demonstrated. At the same time, there is a group of rural schools that try to balance the interests of both groups. The article presents vignettes of three such schools. The key feature of these 'catch-all' schools is negotiated innovation (i.e., sustainable change communicated with local actors and enabling the coexistence of tradition and innovation). Our study provides a deeper insight into the community/magnet typology, building on the perspective of a different part of Europe. It brings important insights for educational policy and the leadership of rural schools.

A Blueprint for Rural Mathematics

Annette Morphett, Lisa O' Keefe, Kathryn Paige — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

This paper reports on the development and use of a Blueprint for Rural Mathematics (herein referred to as the Blueprint) in a study of middle-primary mathematics teaching. The study presented a counter-narrative to the deficit discourse around rural education outcomes through an emic perspective of middle-primary mathematics on Yorke Peninsula, a rural district in southern Australia. This study defined ‘rural’ as being both a sociological and a geographical phenomenon. It takes a sociological stance acknowledging the situatedness of the rural, and the social and cultural uniqueness of the people and their communities. Geographically, the rural locations in this study were those distanced from, and outside the commuting zone of, large urban areas and major cities. This study claimed that rural schools of Yorke Peninsula are unresearched, under-theorised and underestimated in their teaching of mathematics. Hence, very little was known about the experiences of the Yorke Peninsula teachers, or the pedagogical practices they employ in their teaching of mathematics. Yorke Peninsula people have an identity of deficit imposed on them with no opportunity to negotiate it. In understanding and addressing the accuracy of this pervasive negative framing, this study involved investigating Yorke Peninsula teachers of mathematics, and concluded that the rural social space, the identity of its members, and teacher pedagogy are essential considerations in the teaching of mathematics. The Blueprint provides a framework with which to explore these key components of rural education.

Parents’ Perceptions on Parental Involvement in Their Children’s Education in Giyani Municipality Rural-based Schools, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Nomazulu Ngozwana, Amohelang Machobane, Thulani Chauke, Maphuthi Lepholletse — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

The importance of parental involvement in children’s education cannot be overemphasized. This study aimed to explore the role that parents play in the education of their children in the Giyani Municipality, Limpopo Province South Africa. The study followed Epstein's model of school-parent-community partnerships to understand the participation of parents in the education of their children. A qualitative approach was employed to guide the gathering and analysis of the data. Fifty-eight parents that were purposively selected from the four rural schools participated in the focus group discussions that were audio-recorded. Inductive qualitative thematic analysis was used, and the ethics were observed. The findings revealed the role of parental involvement in their children’s education as working with schools, home-schooling, modelling positive attitudes, emotional support, and career counselling. This study has implications for policy and practice in a parent-teacher relationship in rural schools by suggesting that parents should be involved in policy development such as when the curriculum changes.

Remote Special Educational Consultation in Swedish Rural Schools

Kristina Ström, Gerd Pettersson, Kim Wickman — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

With advances in communication technologies, remote special educational consultation has become a promising strategy for indirect special education provision aiming to support students with special educational needs as well as their teachers in remote and rural areas. This study explores how special educators in a rural municipality in Sweden offer remote special educational consultation to teachers and how the two teacher categories experience remote special educational consultation. The empirical data of the study consist of special educators’ and teachers’ responses to an online questionnaire (N=11). The analysis revealed themes reflecting experienced challenges as well as opportunities. The challenges relate to lack of professional commitment and consensus, lack of school leaders’ trust, knowledge and support, and barriers associated with distance and technology, while opportunities relate to increased access to special educational competence, increased structure in consultation and increased professional development and collaboration. The results of this study highlight the potential value of remote special educational consultation as an acceptable, cost-effective, and efficient way of increasing access to special educational expertise and providing special educational support to teachers working in rural and underserved schools.

“We Need to Run Our Own Communities”

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0845

Australian Indigenous student participation rates in higher education are consistently lower than non-Indigenous students, especially in remote contexts. This has manifested in the usurpation of remote Aboriginal community control by ‘more qualified’ external staff. Here we present a reflexive assessment of the development, delivery, outcomes and challenges of the Wuyagiba Bush Uni that was designed to address the paucity of university education in remote Aboriginal communities of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. From 2018 to 2022, 66 Indigenous students graduated with Wuyagiba Micro-credentials (accredited by Macquarie University), and 28 students proceeded to enrol in Bachelor level degrees at Macquarie University in Sydney, with the first graduate in 2023. Furthermore, the Wuyagiba model has created a successful remote Indigenous business that employs about 50 local Indigenous people annually and is working towards empowering endogenous community development in remote Arnhem Land. Nevertheless, many challenges remain including sustainable funding, remote service delivery, university and bureaucratic structural barriers, and lateral violence in remote communities. Several enabling factors of success are identified, such as the cross-cultural curriculum, strong Indigenous control and leadership, wrap-around support, and longstanding relationships between University staff and community leaders. Such reflections can be used by other remote Aboriginal communities who wish to replicate this model or create their own on-Country higher education programs to empower locally trained leaders of the future.