Pedagogy of the Rural is an approach to capture the complexities of rural space and place by challenging simple understandings of what it means to be a teacher in rural settings. Using Harré's positioning theory, Baudrillard's concepts of simulation and simulacra, and Lefebvre's space and economic geographies to form a composite theory through…

Productive ageing recognises the contribution of older people to economic, social and cultural growth and helps build a sustainable community. Being involved in community life is good for individuals and good for society. However, we know very little about the participation of and contribution by people aged 50 and over in rural communities. This…

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…

This paper reports on research into the learning aspects of adopting integrated parasite management practices for sheep (IPM-s) applying a workplace learning framework. An analysis of four primary data sources was conducted; a postal survey of Australian wool producers, a Delphi process with IPM-s researchers, focus groups and interviews with wool…

Within Australia's tropical savanna zone, the northernmost frontier regions have experienced the swiftest transition towards multifunctional occupance, as a formerly flimsy productivist mode is readily displaced by more complex modes, with greater prominence given to consumption, protection and Indigenous values. Of these frontier regions, Cape…

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…

This article explores the responses of school principals of small rural schools in Victoria, Australia to leadership challenges they identify as characteristic of these contexts. The research is an exercise in grounded theory building, with the focus on the principalship as it is enacted in small rural settings. The article also seeks to trace the…

Due to the difficulties inherent in staffing rural schools it is increasingly common for beginning teachers to fill school leadership roles early in their careers. The accelerated progression of some teachers impacts on the overall nature of leadership in rural schools and creates unique pathways, generally different from those available to…

Ask any teacher about their life as a teacher and they will begin with their experience of place. "First I taught there and then I moved there", the matter of time often hazy or more peripheral to the story of place. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) argue, becomings are matters of geography more than history, our lives punctuated by…

Wellbeing is a well-used but ill-defined term in youth research. This paper describes research that explored the ways in which young people and youth workers define wellbeing. The findings suggest that both groups agreed that wellbeing was a multidimensional concept; however, the young people were more likely to consider wellbeing to be influenced…

This paper presents a longitudinal insight into the experiences of "Adam," a young boy who lives with his single-parent father (a farmer and builder) in a rural working-class community on the outskirts of a provincial town in Tasmania, Australia. Adam's story juxtaposes my representations of him as an eight year old in 1999 and as a 12…

This paper uses a study of women's participation in the Australian sugar industry to illustrate and critique the process and usefulness of reflexivity in rural research. I begin by situating the use of reflexivity within the feminist literature. Following this, I describe the way in which I used reflexivity to examine different identities I…

The direction, complexity and pace of rural change in affluent, western societies can be conceptualized as a multifunctional transition, in which a variable mix of consumption and protection values has emerged, contesting the former dominance of production values, and leading to greater complexity and heterogeneity in rural occupance at all…

For many teachers, an appointment to a rural school is their first experience of living and working in a context where they are highly visible and are likely to be known of and known about by far more people than they know of and know about. Space for "making errors" and recovering from them without impairment to becoming an effective…

This article is concerned with the nature of novice teaching principals' interactions in Queensland rural communities. Stories selected from case accounts are used to provide insights into the teaching principals' interrelationship with the community. The article concludes with a discussion of some implications for practice suggested by these…