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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 --…

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…

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…

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…