Rural Education Practice and Policy in Marginalised Communities

Teaching and Learning on the Edge

Authors

  • Jo-Anne Reid CSU

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47381/aijre.v27i1.111

Keywords:

Rural education, marginality, locational disadvantage, wicked problems, rural social space

Abstract

In this paper I focus on the problems that face (teacher) education policy and practice in meeting the challenge of "persistent and entrenched locational disadvantage" in marginal communities. In Dropping off the Edge 2015, Tony Vinson and colleagues (2015) clearly demonstrate that complex and entrenched disadvantage has continued to characterise a number of Australian communities, with few signs of improvement in the past 15 years. A very high proportion of these disadvantaged localities are in rural areas, and they pose an enormous challenge to policy makers and service providers, as well as to the people who live in the communities themselves. In such contexts, education is both crucially important and inexorably difficult. Agreeing with Vinson, Rawshtorne, Beavis and Ericson, that we need to understand locational disadvantage as a wicked problem for a social equity agenda (2015), I argue that the concept of Rural Social Space (Reid et al., 2010) provides a useful and coherent theoretical resource for understanding and addressing this problem, and rethinking the idea of community in ways that are necessary for change to occur. Using an exemplary case of one locality identified by Vinson as threatened with "dropping off the edge", I examine what a wicked problem looks like for social equity in this particular rural social space, and how it calls into question some of our most cherished assumptions about rural communities and rural schooling. The example allows consideration of the kind of policy and practice responses that may be necessary if the problem of educational disadvantage in rural locations is to be adequately addressed.

Author Biography

Jo-Anne Reid, CSU

Jo-Anne Reid is Professor of Education in the Faculty of Arts and Education, and the Presiding Officer of Academic Senate at Charles Sturt University. She began her career teaching Secondary English, worked as a curriculum consultant for beginning teachers in the WA Department of Education, and has had a long-standing involvement in teacher education. Since her doctoral work focused on teacher programming as a means for constituting both school and teaching subjects, her interest in the potential of post-structuralist theories of practice for rethinking education and diversity in post-modern society has informed her research and teaching.  She has won a range of National Competitive Grants over her career, several of which have focussed on English teaching, and teacher education, overseas-born and educated teachers, the career pathways of Indigenous teachers, as well as on literacy and the environment and rural teacher education.

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Published

25-04-2017 — Updated on 01-03-2017

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How to Cite

Reid, J.-A. (2017). Rural Education Practice and Policy in Marginalised Communities: Teaching and Learning on the Edge. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 27(1), 88–103. https://doi.org/10.47381/aijre.v27i1.111 (Original work published April 25, 2017)

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Section

JOURNAL PAPERS

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