Developing Allied Health (AH) graduates who are skilled in responding to public health needs is crucial, particularly in rural areas where workforce shortages and poor health outcomes are common. However, workforce shortages make it difficult to provide rural work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities to teach these skills. This paper presents a…

Investigating the role of school principal continues to be important, for research continues to show that school leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on student learning. Within the study of school leadership, the differentiated experiences of those leading 'small' schools can be overlooked. In Australia, the majority of…

Implementing inclusive education requires on-going commitment to teachers' professional learning. One way of implementing professional learning is to develop learning communities based on Lave and Wenger's ideas of situated learning and learning as social practice. Learning communities, drawing on models of Professional Learning Communities and…

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…

The world needs great individual educational changemakers capable of identifying problems and creating bold, scalable solutions. But the world also needs Dream Teams--groups of talented administrators, teachers, staff, students, and community members who are passionate about making things better for kids, believe that school-based change is the…

A difficult nexus can arise in positivist research when developing a model or theoretical framework that is then used to underpin the construction of measuring instruments that are subsequently used to test the assumptions underlying the model. This paper explores this nexus through consideration of a study of risk-taking in decision-making for…

Within the city-state of South Australia, the problem of attracting teachers to teach in rural schools is of long standing. We propose that "metrocentricity" can be viewed as a personal trait inhibiting teachers from considering country positions. In this project, 148 preservice teachers responded to an online survey concerning their…

In Australia, concerns about the quality of mathematics education that students experience are particularly salient in rural schools. These schools typically report great difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified teachers of mathematics. Teachers in non-metropolitan locations may also experience professional isolation if they have limited…

In New South Wales the focus on assessment "for" learning requires teachers to consider carefully the alignment between assessment, curriculum, and pedagogy. This emerging agenda in teacher education seeks to ensure that assessment practices provide advice to teachers about what students know and where teaching might be directed to…

There is an increase in school-community linked initiatives in school science. A substantial proportion of these involve rural schools. This article asks the question: In what ways do these initiatives offer possibilities for better engaging rural students with school science? The paper draws on information from a number of school-community linked…

A solid understanding of equivalent fractions is considered a steppingstone towards a better understanding of operations with fractions. In this article, 55 rural Australian students' conceptions of equivalent fractions are presented. Data collected included students' responses to a short written test and follow-up interviews with three students…

The academic and social achievements of students in rural schools are very uneven and often absenteeism and suspension rates are high. Factors such as globalisation, economic restructuring, unemployment, youth suicide and family trauma, drought and environmental change (see Bourke & Lockie 2001) also impact on rural schooling and add further…

This paper examines attitudes of longtime teachers toward teaching and living in rural communities in New South Wales (Australia). The findings are part of a 2-year study of 1100 teachers with at least 6 years experience in their schools. Over 90 percent of the teachers indicated that they were satisfied with their jobs; about two-thirds indicated…

Promoting efficient energy use in schools that consequently reduces greenhouse gas emissions is the purpose of a residential Energy Efficiency in Schools (EEIS) program reported on in this paper. Research on this program aligns with one of the "key "overarching" sustainability issues", set out in the "Learning for…

Using case studies from seven rural and regional areas, this report looks at the impact of schools and vocational education and training (VET) on community capacity. It finds that communities have developed different models to organise school-VET partnerships and that rural areas are more likely to adopt a whole-of-community model, while regional…