ARC DECRA: Engaging rural knowledges for sustainable futures: spatial justice and rural schooling

Project Timeline: 2020-2022

In contemporary society rural, regional and remote (RRR) students, and their communities, are often described as ‘disadvantaged’. This ‘disadvantage’ has long been a wicked problem in Australian education and social policy. Initiatives such as the Gonski policies bring a focus to the redistribution of resources to rural schools in order to help redress this recognised disadvantage.

In this research, we explore the processes of schooling (specifically, curriculum access and the measurement of achievement) that such redistribution of resources supports, in order to ascertain underlying patterns and better target strategies and interventions. In this project we draw on rural social theory to explore the idea that the processes of schooling, especially what is studied and how achievement is measured, are metrocentric - that is, they are based on values of the metropole and are imposed on non-metropolitan communities in a form of injustice based on their geographic or spatial location.

This research aims to:

• outline the spatial dimensions of educational access and achievement;
• identify forms of rural knowledges, and explore avenues for their inclusion in Australian education; and
• identify dimensions of rural school success as understood by rural communities and expressed in their own terms.

This iterative program of study has four interlinking strands – conceptually, a helix structure:

1. Administrative data analysis
2. The identification and application of community-developed indicators of educational ‘success’
3. The surfacing and valuing of community and school-identified rural knowledges
4. School case studies
   
   
   

Understanding how knowledge in/of/for the rural is engaged with in contemporary (Australian) education is critical to changing the way that rural disadvantage is constructed and experienced and to achieving spatial justice.  From this position, the research program examines existing data on educational access and achievement, constructs alternative measures of educational success, recognises and engages with rural knowledges in the classroom, and engages a community perspective to develop a novel mixed-method program of rural-focussed research in order to reframe rural educational disadvantage. This project is designed to articulate into two major international research programs, and lead into transnational comparative studies of rural schooling of global significance. It also brings together the disparate academic fields of rural education, curriculum inquiry and rural studies.

The anticipated outcomes of the project Engaging Rural Knowledges for Sustainable Futures include:

• the development of new methods for constructing research knowledges in rural communities and schools;
• the development of new theoretical tools for expanding our understanding of, and engagement with, rural knowledges;
• the development of new tools for understanding rural school ‘success’;
• the identification of approaches to engaging the rural sector in new knowledge transfers to enhance productivity and equity; and
• ideas for future curriculum reform.

Publications

• Roberts, P. (2018). Looking for the rural. In A. Reid & D. Price, The Australian Curriculum: Promises, Problems and Possibilities. Australian Curriculum Studies Associationpp. 201-210.
• Roberts, P. (2017). A Curriculum for Whom?: Rereading ‘Implementing the Australian Curriculum in Rural, Regional, Remote and Distance-Education Schools’ from a rural standpoint. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education. 27 (1) pp.69-88.
• Roberts P. (2015). Education for Rural Australia. In A. Hogan & M. Young, Rural and Regional Futures. Routledgepp. 117-134.
• Downes, N. & Roberts, P. (2015). Valuing rural meanings: The work of parent supervisors challenging dominant educational discourses. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 25(3). pp.80-93.
• Roberts, P.  (2014). A Curriculum for the Country: The Absence of the Rural in a National Curriculum. Curriculum Perspectives. 3 (1) pp. 51-60.
• Roberts, P. (2013). The role of an authentic curriculum and pedagogy for rural schools and the professional satisfaction of rural teachers. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education. 23(2) pp. 89-99.

Related Projects

• ARC Discovery Project: Building rural knowledges: connecting classrooms, communities and learners with curriculum
• Cultural context in standardised tests
• NSW rural and remote schools research project
• NSW Ambassador Schools Program
• Towards place-based education in the Murray-Darling Basin