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Educational and socioeconomic disadvantage in remote communities, and the inadequacies of government action to bring about significant change needs to be addressed. This article presents a descriptive study examining the complexities of staffing remote and very remote schools in Australia with appropriately-qualified teachers. The findings of analysis of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on behalf of the Australian Government through the National Schools Statistics Collection (NSSC) indicate that the majority of students in remote schools in Australia live, and are educated in, Indigenous communities in three jurisdictions. This raises concerns of unacknowledged and unacceptable discrimination. Complexity within the current approach to resourcing of remote and very remote schools in Australia, especially in relation to economies of scale are explored. The analysis of existing data was discussed, and how this may be used to address the perennial failure to develop quality decisions, particularly in areas of resourcing in remote and very remote schools.

Policies of dispersal are increasingly favoured internationally for the resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers. With forty percent of the world's forcibly displaced people being school-aged children, the dispersal of refugee-background people into regional areas means that rural schools are central sites of community response to refugees. Little is known in published research about how rural schools engage in refugee education within the policy context of 'dispersal'. This review of relevant literature examines the educational dimensions of dispersal policies, drawing on research in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden. Research linking refugee resettlement, refugee education and rurality shows a complex interplay between histories of exclusion and contemporary challenges in both the construction of rural spaces, and the deployment of humanitarian dispersal policies at national and international levels. This literature is thematically organised to show that in refugee education within a policyscape of dispersal, rural schools may be 1) operating in racialised community contexts; 2) working within poorly resourced infrastructure; 3) unfamiliar with refugee-background students; and, despite these challenges, they may become 4) key sites of resistance, creativity and support for refugee-background students and their families.

Homesick disposition, an individual's expectation about becoming homesick in the future, has been identified as an important predictor of homesickness. Homesick disposition can be detected and measured even before the separation from home has taken place, making it particularly relevant to understanding feelings and perceptions of rural school students who have yet to relocate and transition to university. A timely detection of homesickness may facilitate prevention strategies for students to feel more confident about going to university. Based on the theory of homesickness, this study uses a quantitative approach with a sample of 620 Australian rural students to examine the relationship between homesick disposition and some factors that have been discussed as its likely predictors in rural students, such as perceptions of control over the decision of transitioning to university, the levels of information managed about university, and the support students perceive they have from their social capital. Results show that rural students' levels of perceptions of control and social capital are important predictors of homesick disposition.

Upcoming changes in the teacher labor supply will have an impact on nations that provide government-based education for their youth. Faced with a significant global shortfall of educators, most countries have taken steps to incentivize teaching as a profession and ensure that qualified teachers are available to students in all locations -- particularly in rural environments. To understand these initiatives more thoroughly, a short-term policy analysis focused on incentives for teacher labor through a lens of governmental policy implementation has been completed. This resulted in a review of the efforts three nations (Australia, the United States and Zambia) have undertaken to ensure a viable and consistent teacher workforce in rural areas. While each nation has specific factors that contribute to current and projected shortages, each also provides unique solutions to assist in resolving this ongoing issue. Through the examination of multiple hiring factors and incentives used in each location, a better understanding of the specific challenges and strategies employed to secure a viable teaching workforce has been developed. Outcomes related to this policy analysis showed commonalities in the lack of developed strategies to prepare rural educators to address teacher shortages in more remote regions. In addition, while education leaders in each country continue to publicly call for additional support for rural teachers -- very little legislation or policy implementation has been enacted to bolster this subsection of public education in any of the specified nations. Additional discussion about the long-term concerns regarding rural teacher supply and student equity is also developed.

Digital media skills are becoming more important in contemporary Australia. As the digital economy gains momentum, the 2020 Australian Digital Inclusion Index reports a continued gap between rural Australians and urban Australian, indicating the continued existence of the digital divide. However, almost half of all Year 10 Australian students did not have sufficient information and communication technology (ICT) skills in 2014. Thus, understanding how rural students who are interested in digital media careers learn and develop digital media skills is important for improving digital media education for isolated student groups. This research draws on 25 interviews with rural Queensland students contemplating careers both within and outside digital media industries. The findings show different forms of cultural capital students draw on to further their digital media skills, including extracurricular opportunities and self-learning. This research highlights the interviewed students' perceptions of the value of digital media learning based on their career aspirations.

Attracting high quality teachers to regional, rural, and remote locations has been an issue for school communities in Australia. Research has illustrated that innovative initiatives and experiences can change pre-service teachers' attitudes, perspectives and perceptions about regional, rural and remote schools. What is less understood is the contribution of school leaders foregrounding a place consciousness approach to spark pre-service teacher interest in undertaking professional experience placements and possible employment in their RRR schools. This paper shares research findings that identified how Far North Queensland school leaders showcased "their place" with key stakeholders and in particular with pre-service teachers. The findings affirmed notions that school leaders understand the valuable connections between rural, regional and remote pre-service professional experiences and the potentiality for high quality teachers for the long-term. Implications are drawn in relation to how school leaders create partnerships and promote their school place intentionally.

Understanding the rural intentions of medical students has the potential to improve the effective allocation of rural clinical placements, the demand for which regularly exceeds availability. Longitudinal studies on students' rural intentions have been published but a refined understanding of the spectrum of intentions is absent in the literature. To fully understand students' rural intentions, and the factors influencing those intentions, comprehensive research, at all stages of a student's academic career, is required. The project used for this article, identifies a group with neutral intention and explores the influence of a range of demographic factors and variety of rural experience for their potential to move students towards high rural intention. The study also identifies trends in student perceptions of potential locations for rural practice in Western Australia. This more detailed approach is offered as a basis for a future model to inform the allocation of scarce rural placement opportunities, known to be significant in converting rural intention into practice. The project responds to increasingly frequent calls for changes to policy and practice regarding the allocation of rural clinical placements to better realise their value in improving the maldistribution of Australia's medical workforce. The study suggests that a greater range of indicators, beyond being of rural origin, can lead to neutral or high rural intention. The results of this study suggest a model that incorporates these additional elements and tracks their development over time would be a valuable component in initiatives aimed at building positive rural intention.

This paper reports on a project aimed at investigating teacher wellbeing in remote communities in Australia. It utilised a multiple case study methodology to investigate the lived experiences of remote Australian teachers, particularly how remote teachers simultaneously manage the wellbeing and academic needs of their students. Findings show how the challenges of working in remote places impact teacher wellbeing and provides six practical recommendations about how to better support remote teachers. There is a present need to develop a framework of remote teachers thriving, so systems and communities are not over-reliant upon teachers' individual resilience in hard-to-staff places.

To outline the current state of empirical knowledge in rural gifted education, a systematic review of the international empirical literature was conducted with peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2000 to 2020. Six inclusion/exclusion criteria guided the searches that were undertaken of the ERIC and PsycINFO databases, six peer-reviewed journals in gifted education, and three peer-reviewed journals in rural education, along with the reference lists of the journal articles identified from the database and journal searches. The 103 journal articles that were eventually identified as meeting search criteria were thereafter analyzed to document key details, including the countries/regions of origin, publication outlets, authorship, approaches to data collection and analyses, and the major findings. A discussion of the key issues and trends in the identified studies, along with areas for focus in future investigations, concludes the review.

This paper reflects the challenges and opportunities created by teaching and learning music remotely, due to the impact of COVID-19, for students and teachers living in regional areas of Australia. How teachers can collaborate with students to build positive outcomes by providing creative opportunities and presenting and promoting diversity while also underwriting student and staff well-being. Remote teaching may become a regular part of school life as we know it in the future and as lockdowns persist, stress continues to impact and disengage many students. We as teachers have a responsibility to plan for and provide interesting and alternative ways to teach our students by offering subject material that helps engage and motivate them, acknowledging each students' genuine attempt and supporting what remains important to them during their remote learning days. These alternative ways can include celebrating and engaging in the aspects of music in the everyday lives of students and their families. By understanding the difficulties associated with remote learning in rural settings and supporting students and their families and pets, teachers and students can embrace and share the joys of experiencing living the country life, so important to all regional students and their families.

Inclusive education remains a challenge for Australian tertiary education, particularly specialized pedagogical approaches like work-integrated learning (WIL) and service learning. Critiques of mainstream pedagogical approaches raise questions about the predominant models of educating students (Butin, 2010; Howard, 1998). There is a definitive need to recognize the diversity of the student population within course structures, rather than integrating diverse student needs into a static curriculum (Harrison & Ip, 2013) "Wise practice" takes WIL objectives--professional skills development and professional experience--and positions inclusion and transformation at the center of the learning experience. This paper explores inclusive education in WIL and service learning and examines how a wise practice approach can help all students equally benefit from the transformative potential of service learning

In this article we offer a comparative analysis of vocational education and training (VET) in two rural regional locations by situating the pragmatic problem of advising rural students against the backdrop of differently structured market-oriented vocational education systems in Canada and Australia, respectively. Each of these jurisdictions offers a particular vision of the place of VET in the context of compulsory education. In rural/regional Canada and Australia, we argue, the socio-material situation within which students live can provide what Bourdieu called "coherent and convenient" educational choices for students to challenge educators to create the conditions for an engaging and non-binary (academic-vocational) approach to compulsory schooling. We conclude, given the constantly changing nature of contemporary occupational opportunities and labour markets, that the goals of the new vocationalism will only be achieved in rural areas through challenging programming that focuses on capabilities, change, and multiple integrated literacies that span and expand the academic-vocational binary.

Currently, an almost exclusively female workforce provides the government mandated adult supervision of Australian primary and secondary school students enrolled in distance education, including geographically isolated learners. These Remote Education Tutors (RETs) include unpaid family support providers and externally employed governesses and home tutors who are paid by the children's families. This crucial position has no prerequisite qualifications, which in turn generates occupational invisibility and an absence of recognised career pathways for the individuals fulfilling the responsibilities of this role. In response, we propose innovative partnerships for credentialling the experiences and effectiveness of Australian RETs, in order to recognise their professional status and to contribute to a sustainable rural education workforce. Such credentialling will entail dynamic and mutually responsive collaborations among the distance education stakeholders, including the tutors, the children's families and the universities charged with administering such credentialling. Evidence to support this proposal is provided by selected data from a 2021 national survey completed by 575 current and former RETs in most Australian States and Territories. These data underwent descriptive analysis that elicited four themes that encapsulated key elements of the RETs' lives and contexts: career pathways, economic disadvantage, gender roles, and educational equity. This account framed by Cardini' s (2006) politicised conceptualisation of partnerships highlights both the urgency and the complexity of envisaging and enacting situationally responsive rural community-university collaborations to support this vital yet invisible segment of the Australian educational workforce.

While many remote places in Queensland, Australia have access to schools, very few have provision for preschool education. Recent efforts to change this have included the development of a kindergarten program delivered through the local school. An impact assessment undertaken in 2017 involved visiting 30 remote sites offering the program. Analysis of interview data indicated the importance of sense of place in the delivery of this program. Educators and family members were overwhelmingly supportive of the option of a kindergarten program in their sites, regarding it as an equity and social justice imperative to provide access to programs that seem to be taken-for-granted for children and families in urban and regional locations. The potential for the program to enhance social interactions and educational outcomes was highlighted, even when educators noted a range of challenges in the implementation of the program. Sense of place and the positioning of educators and families are explored in the paper.

A global perspective of education, special education, rural communities, and non-traditional instruction is provided for two countries. Both Turkey and Australia have responded to the COVID-19 global pandemic in similar yet, different ways. Through the tale of two countries navigating the rapid response to school closure for students with disabilities, we all can gain understanding from examining strategies used by national, state, and local governments; school systems; and support agencies. From these strategies, we can determine effective and efficient models moving forward that support all students (e.g., students with mental health and medical needs) through non-traditional education during natural disasters, pandemics, or unexpected events

The experiences of regional and rural teachers supporting students on the autism spectrum in their classrooms often differ from those of their metropolitan counterparts. Interventions designed for metropolitan settings may not work the same way in regional and rural classrooms, and teachers outside major centres may encounter challenges in accessing appropriate resources and professional development. Research focussed on teaching students on the spectrum is largely conducted in metropolitan areas and does not address the contextual factors impacting regional and rural educators. Using data collected as part of a larger study, this paper examines the experiences of regional and rural teachers who were introduced to models of practice designed to support their decision making with respect to supporting students on the autism spectrum. Through interviews and survey responses, these teachers have described challenges and opportunities related to the unique and diverse settings in which they work. Their perceptions of the benefits of the models and accompanying professional support in these settings reinforce the need to embed inclusive support for students on the spectrum in foundational teaching practices that can be adapted to diverse classrooms.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything about the world we live in, in 2020. It is having obvious impacts on the way we teach and the way we learn. In Victoria, Monash Rural Health Bendigo is one of the few places that has managed to continue clinical health education and clinical placements throughout 2020--albeit in modified forms. Monash Rural Health Bendigo provides clinical years education to a cohort of between 100 and 130 Third, Fourth- and Fifth-Year Monash Medical students in a rural setting. It is largely an 'apprentice based' model of learning where the students get access to rural clinical sites and rural health experts as well as a state-of-the-art clinical skills and simulation lab to undertake the clinical years of their medical degree. But what happens to this kind of model during a pandemic induced shut down such as was experienced in 2020? This paper explores the challenges but also opportunities for students pursuing a rural health pathway in the midst of a public health emergency. It examines the findings of the COVID-19 Educational Evaluation conducted in Bendigo throughout 2020 and reveals the advantages but also the unanticipated consequences of students choosing to study rurally in the midst of a global pandemic.

Often in the past, historians tended to study and write mainly about key figures, such as rulers or very famous people. However, in recent decades, historians have started to focus on local figures who had a role in their community. This paper narrates the life of one of those characters, an interesting individual who led a varied and interesting life with a strong connection to rural Australia. This man was George Victor Le Vaux, a Canadian educator whose life had numerous different facets and interesting twists. The idea that prompted the writing of this article was Le Vaux's connection to Italy and its unification, but also the fact that a complete account of his life had never been attempted. The methodology used was an historical analysis of the available sources and an investigation of the education sector in the second half of the 19th century in Queensland. Therefore, the aim of the study is to provide an account, as accurate as possible, of Le Vaux's life and his thoughts and ideas on education.

This research examines national data and investigates the nature of provincial education in Australia, with a particular focus on students attending schools in isolated areas. Numerous government reports and research findings have acknowledged a range of issues regarding the academic performance of students from "rural" to describe the nature of educational research undertaken in non- metropolitan Australia as inadequate, and not reflective of the way schools are classified by government agencies.

Associate Professor Margaret Plunkett, Federation University, Australia, has over 30 years' experience in education. She currently coordinates and lectures in a range of courses and programs in both secondary and primary education, related to gifted education and professional experience. Margaret has won a number of awards for teaching excellence including the Monash Vice Chancellors Teaching Excellence Award (Special Commendation, 2010); the Pearson/ATEA Teacher Educator of the Year Award (2012); and a National Office of Learning of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation in 2014.

The term 'choice-less choice' in education arises from the ethical dilemma where parents are left with no option other than one they do not want to choose. In this article, we draw particularly from David Mander's (2012) use of the term, where he applied it to First Nations students from Western Australia. In Australia, choice-less choice applies to many rural parents where the local school does not offer secondary education options. They must 'choose' a boarding option for their child, or another option such as moving their family to a location where there is a secondary school, or perhaps distance schooling. Other parents have a local secondary option, but this option may not result in Year 12 completion. Based on My School data, this paper uses Google Maps to spatially represent where, in very remote parts of Australia, parents have limited access to local secondary schools or secondary schools that rarely produce completions. The data from My School shows that in very remote areas, this choice-less choice applies to about 6500 students and their families. A further 13000 First Nations students and their families face choice-less choice because even though there is a secondary school in their community, the chances of completing are slim. To explain the latter phenomenon, we draw on Appadurai's (2004) theory of 'capacity to aspire', which suggests that choices are culturally pre-determined and dependent on access to power. Finally, we consider the implications of choice-less choice and suggest how choice-less choice can be removed.

A personal teaching project, developed over six years at a regional university campus, offered mentoring to capable and engaged students with limited subject options. Providing individual or near-individual instruction enabled the mentored students to deepen their learning, extend their discipline knowledge and consider career steps. With their undergraduate experiences thus enriched many students excelled in their special subject. This individualised training and mentorship, above the general learning threshold available or expected, resulted in high grades and several research outputs: posters at conferences, conference presentations and refereed journal articles. Interactively mentoring students also provided a learning process for the academic mentor. Significantly, mentors' experiences in academic mentor-student mentee relationships receives much less attention than students' experiences and satisfaction. In the contemporary ethos of student-centred learning, the present study supports and exemplifies mentoring pedagogy as inherent in passionate teaching. Reflecting on the mentor's experience here identifies features and practices learned or consolidated in developing effective, caring, and productive undergraduate student mentoring. For the academic mentor, managing each relationship in terms of encouragement, ethics, expectations and transparency has been important to its success. Although the work did not receive a formal workload allocation, outputs have benefits for students in terms of their CVs and growth in personal confidence. Benefits for academic staff include achieving co-authored research outputs and the university benefits through additional outputs to its overall research activity and culture.

Leadership programs have been extensively promoted in rural communities in Australia. However, few have been evaluated. The results of the evaluation of a rural leadership program provided in this paper highlight the need for adult learning theories to be more overtly identified and utilised as the basis of planning and implementing leadership programs. Transformative learning theory and social learning theory were used to explain the impact the program had for participants and to provide insight into how similar programs could be enhanced.

We present results of a systematic review of empirical research on racism and the schooling experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, focussing on research published from 1989 to 2016. Our review is part of a series of systematic literature reviews on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in Australia. It attends to diverse manifestations of racism, from institutional and systemic discrimination to everyday microaggressions, and varying levels of analysis, from individual experiences to cohort approaches. This work adopts a critical perspective on disciplinary boundaries and the outcomes discourse within the broad field of education research. Additionally, we discuss the challenges inherent in systematic review inclusion/exclusion criteria related to racism in a field such as education in which racism and discrimination are frequently misrepresented or misreported, for example, as disciplinary and behaviour management issues, disadvantage or as regional and remote education challenges. The review discusses study types and locations, explores how racism is defined and understood and details the effects of racism on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Education for Australian First Nations students living in remote communities has long been seen as an intractable problem. Ten years of concerted effort under Closing the Gap and related policy initiatives has done little to change outcomes beyond small, incremental improvements. Programmes and strategies promising much have come and gone, and most have died a quiet death. This apparent failure leaves the context of remote education ripe for the picking. If we can demonstrate what works and why, it may provide an answer to the problem. This systematic review aims to uncover what research reveals about what does make a difference to outcomes for students. The review found 45 papers that provide considerable evidence to show what is and is not effective. The review also found several issues that have little or no evidence and which could be the subject of more research.

This article examines student life in an Australian rural teachers college. The paper is informed by studies on university student life and extends these to Australia's first rural teachers college in the period 1945-1955. It explores the diversity of students' experiences in a small college with predominately female students gradually supplemented by male students. It looks at staff student relations in a college struggling to train teachers for rural Australian towns in the immediate post World War II period. While these rural students' lives were similar to those portrayed in the standard histories of teacher education students were well aware of the basic nature of the curriculum and were not uncritical of it. However, they viewed what was offered as feasible given the circumstances. Their life at college was broadening and fulfilling and led to rewarding careers that enabled them to make not insignificant contributions to the teaching profession. (Contains 1 figure.)

The ability to visualize student engagement and experience data provides valuable opportunities for learning support and curriculum design. With the rise of the use of learning analytics to provide "actionable intelligence" on students' learning, the challenge is to create visualizations of the data, which are clear and useful to the intended audience. This process of finding the best way to visually represent data is often iterative, with many different designs being trialled before the final design is settled upon. This paper presents a case study of the process of refining a visualization of students' learning experience data. In this case the aim was to create a visual representation of the continuity of care students were exposed to during a longitudinal placement as part of a medical degree. The process of visualization refinement is outlined as well as the lessons learned along the way. (Contains 5 figures.)

Encouraging quality teaching staff to apply for and accept teaching placements in rural and remote locations is an ongoing concern internationally. The value of different support mechanisms provided for pre-service teachers attending a rural and remote practicum are investigated through theories of place and the school-community nexus. Qualitative data regarding the experiences of the pre-service teachers were collected through interviews and case study notes. This project adds to our understanding of practicum in rural areas by employing a conceptual understanding of place to propose how the experiences of a four-week practicum may contribute to urban pre-service teachers' conceptions of work and life in a rural community.

This paper presents a professional learning (PL) model that emerged from the authors' involvement with PL processes in several rural and remote schools in the state of Tasmania. As is the case for rural areas generally, young people in rural areas of Tasmania have lower retention rates to Year 12 and lower participation rates in higher education than their urban peers. Schools in these regions typically have less experienced staff, higher staff turnover and reduced access to professional networks compared with urban schools. Four case studies are presented to illustrate the experiences that lead to the partnership model of PL and the authors' insights into the nature of collaborative partnerships in rural contexts are discussed The study makes a contribution to understanding of the development of effective PL partnerships in rural schools as well as contributing to broader debates about the nature of partnership between teachers and facilitators of PL. (Contains 2 figures and 1 footnote.)

The problem of teacher retention has intensified in Australia, particularly in rural areas, with a number of studies suggesting that beginning teachers are not entering the profession with a commitment to remaining there. This paper reports on a study of 102 new teachers graduating from a rural campus of a major Australian university. Utilising a self devised survey over a 3 year period, graduate reflections were captured on what it meant for them to become a teacher. The research sought to determine graduates' goals and aspirations for working in the profession in both the long and the short term. Participants reported that while they were looking for stability and would like to remain in their current positions, they were hampered by the present contractual system which eroded any sense of permanence. It is argued that contractual employment disrupts the development of a sense of belonging to the profession and the building of meaningful connections between teachers and their schools, a factor that will require attention if retention issues within rural Australia are to be seriously addressed. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper investigates regional Australian students' aspirations and expectations for their future and, more specifically, the manner in which these are formulated around a view to move outward--that is, away from regional, remote and rural communities--and onward--that is, to make something of their lives. Drawing upon interview data, the paper highlights the ways in which rural students from across Australia expressed high-level aspirations, most of which centred on future careers. It explores features of student talk which demonstrates that many of them had thought about their futures in detailed ways and had accumulated knowledge and "street savvy" that would assist them in steering their futures. The paper also examines the ways in which student talk about the changing context of the world of work and the inescapability of further education emerge as a naturalised discourse in justifying their future plans. Finally, the paper explores the implications of such research findings for career advisers and teachers working in regional areas of Australia. (Contains 1 table.)

While there has been research into the provision of "distance" and "off-campus" education, both in relation to technology and to curriculum, little attention has been given to the experiences of students studying in geographically remote locations, where the remoteness has been an aspect of investigation. This study aimed to investigate the experiences of such students, and to suggest strategies to support them. The students recruited for this project were undergraduate and postgraduate students from remote locations around Australia who had studied at Deakin University between 2003 through 2007. They were interviewed by telephone. The three key issues identified by participants were a sense of isolation, the attitudes and knowledge of the teaching staff; and students' knowledge and use of learning technologies. (Contains 3 tables.)

In 2017, SPERA [Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia] members and supporters were surveyed on their views of rural education. Forty-two participants responded to the online survey through targeted and snowball recruitment. Participants shared their opinions of the main issues in rural education, the challenges facing rural communities and schools, and what they would like to see change to improve the futures of rural youth. There were two consistent themes: concern about access to quality education for all learners and the survival of rural communities. This included worries about isolation, the attraction and retention of teachers, the availability of opportunities for different types of learners and knowledge, insufficient infrastructure, and post-school options for youth. It is noted that these findings are similar to those in other key reports such as the recent Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education, 2000 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) Report and the 1987 Schooling in Rural Australia Report, with their persistence a disappointing concern for education in Australia.

In an age of globalised learning and teaching, university education continues to extend beyond the classroom with students participating in rich learning opportunities designed to provide authentic learning experiences and foster an international perspective. Bridging the geographical divide between on campus, off campus, rural and remote learners has been an ongoing challenge for many universities often resulting in a different learning experience based on the mode of study. The discourse of rurality in this paper, is situated in Reid et al's (2010) rural social space where learners face specific economic, geographic and demographic issues relative to a particular context. However, this paper will present a model of innovative communication technologies and new generation learning spaces, coined within as "new generation distributed learning classes", emerging to support learning through video and web conferencing which situates local, rural, distance and overseas learners to participate collaboratively in real-time student-centred learning experiences with diverse student perspectives.

Education authorities continue to experience difficulty in recruiting and retaining teachers in rural and remote schools. In Western Australia (WA), a state noted for its vastness and number of schools located in rural and remote settings, a scheme developed by the Western Australian Department of Education and Training (DET) and the WA Chamber of Minerals and Energy aims to address this challenge by offering financial support to student teachers who wish to undertake their final practicum in a remote or rural education district in which they hope to work after graduation. The Student Teacher Rural Experience Program (STREP) assists with return travel costs and a weekly stipend for the duration of the practicum. The DET specifies the particular districts to which the STREP will apply and applicants need to satisfy a number of selection criteria. In 2005 a survey involving 2004 and 2005 STREP participants was undertaken to ascertain their opinions about how effective the program was in preparing them to teach in rural locations. This article discusses the quantitative data and participant comments on issues not adequately covered by STREP and how the program might be improved. (Contains 1 table.)

The Rural Education Bureau of the New Mexico Public Education Department has established a program to address the special needs of schools and communities in the extensive rural areas of the state. High poverty rates, depopulation and a general lack of viable economic opportunity have marked rural New Mexico for decades. The program underway aims at establishing holistic community socioeconomic revitalization at the grass roots level with the schools playing a leading role. Initiatives include community conversations with key leaders to determine necessary steps to take in encouraging economic growth and attracting businesses, the institution of entrepreneurship within the community, the transformation of the school into a community resource and the encouragement of place-based education within schools. In the second year of this program there are 13 school districts actively involved in the enhancement of their schools and community. The program adopted many of the principles for rural revitalization seen in the remote communities of South Australia.

There are important issues for rural communities in Australia in relation to the provision of education for their young people (HREOC, 2000). This is particularly so in an era when successful completion of education is becoming increasingly vital as the pressures of a globalised economy mean that many rural and farming businesses are struggling to prosper. The term "place-based education" is used by educators and researchers who have a focus on the well-being and effective learning of students. This paper explores what is meant by "place-based education" and how this concept of education is being implemented in some rural schools in Australia, although usually without using this term. A review of literature about effective literacy learning will demonstrate why teaching that is place-based is important for rural students. What the implementation of place-based education might look like in rural schools is also explored. (Contains 9 footnotes.)