Rurality and Education

This book broadens the scope of the subject of rural education and enlivens the ways in which the subject may be studied. Through textual and visual analysis of a range of sources – including young adult novels, the farming simulation game ‘Hay Day’ and reality television programs – the contributors investigate how the lives of young people in rural spaces are mediated by a range of social locations including class, ethnicity and sexuality. Additionally, through rich and detailed ethnographic work, the book explores the complicated and multifaceted meanings of rural places and examines how these meanings shape experiences of schooling for teachers and students. In doing so, the book embeds the study of rural education in explorations of patrilineal inheritance on family farms, international migration, globalisation and economic restructuring. It aims to start a conversation about the robust and complex ways in which the confluence between ‘rural’ and ‘education’ may be imagined, experienced and researched.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Barbara Pini is a Professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Her research focuses on social inequality in rural communities. She has undertaken research which examines the intersections of gender and rurality and explored how gender and rurality are mediated by social locations such as disability, class, sexuality, youth, ethnicity and Indigeneity to create inclusions and exclusions.

Robyn Mayes is an Associate Professor in the School of Management at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests include labour migration, gender, rurality and community. This research is grounded in empirical work which critically examines the Australian mining sector, but also encompasses temporary migration, fly-in-fly-out mobilities, corporate social responsibility, women and work and the place of local communities.

Laura Rodriguez Castro is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests are in the areas of visual methods, rural studies, feminist research, de(s)colonialism and Latin American studies. She is also involved in community activism and freelancing.