Since 1990, the Australian higher education system has experienced ongoing reform resulting in the number of universities and student populations more than doubling. Despite this expansion, inequalities in access to higher education related to family background and location persist. Due to the concentration of higher education campuses in the…

Rural, regional and remote (RRR) students are less likely to participate in higher education and tend to be older than their city counterparts. Individual and family factors influencing RRR students' higher education access and participation are well researched. However, little is known about community factors supporting access and participation,…

In Australia, there has been a sustained investment in widening participation activities by the federal government through the Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program (HEPPP) and a sustained effort by universities and their partner schools to create high-quality widening participation programs. However, there is limited longitudinal…

The last Australian government review on rural education reveals that staffing schools continues to be a challenge. To examine this problem, the paper draws on data from semi-structured interviews with pre-service teachers undertaking rural school placement. The aim is to address rural school staffing through a bi-dimensional social justice…

Despite the amount of information known about how people engage in offline social interactions, there is limited knowledge regarding how such interactions express themselves in the online environment. For social interactions to be consistently harmonious, a level of interpersonal competence and self-efficacy are required. The study aims to…

Pre-service teachers need to be prepared to teach in both rural and urban contexts. Preparation to teach multi-grade classes in rural schools is excellent preparation for teaching any class, including urban single-grade classes. Based on our previous research and experience, we designed a unit to prepare our pre-service teachers for the issues…

Indigenous students remain vastly under-represented within higher education in Australia. While aspirations have been a key focus of the widening participation agenda, the aspirations of Indigenous students have largely been overlooked. Drawing on survey data collected as part of a mixed methods longitudinal study conducted with students in Years…

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 [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] students who went to school in rural or…

This paper reports on outcomes of Phases One and Two of the ALTC Competitive Research and Development Project "Developing Strategies at the Pre-Service Level to Address Critical Teacher Attraction and Retention Issues in Australian Rural, Regional and Remote Schools". This project funded over two years aims to strengthen the capacity and…

Engaging successfully in the modern technological society requires a command of mathematics. Hence, successfully engaging with mathematics has social, economic and political implications. There has been a history over a long period of time of significant numbers of people not forming productive relationships with learning mathematics. Failure in…

We examined whether the presence of higher education facilities made regional towns more attractive as potential residences. Metropolitan undergraduate students reported that they were more willing to live in a regional town with (vs. without) a university. Importantly, this applied regardless of whether they intended to work or study at the…

We know that rural young people have less access to higher education than do metropolitan youth, and that the effect of location is a much stronger influence than SES or achievement (Rothman, Hillman, McKenzie, & Marks, 2009). We also know that, based on achievement data, many rural young people, who might be expected to enrol in university,…

An informal research project with high local relevance was developed for a first-year sociology course at an Australian rural university campus. The project developed students' sociological insight by challenging them to investigate "truths" about their own region, rather than immediately pushing them to comprehend new and different…

Students from rural and low socioeconomic backgrounds do not pursue university education at the same rate as those from metropolitan areas or from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. This has been a long-standing issue for government. This study explores the aspirations and intentions for university education among low socioeconomic status (SES) and…

This article is essentially written as two linked parts. The first part considers how space, spatiality and history can contribute to understanding and "doing something about" the sustainability of rural communities. This is done by extensive reference to Soja's (1989 & 1996) space and spatial theorising and selective perspectives of…