Late-Career Women Leaders in Rural Schools

Rural schools in New South Wales, Australia, have been a focus of investigations by the University of New England's Bush Tracks Research Group since 2002. Drawing on the Bush Tracks research, which sought to identify the challenges and opportunities faced by both teachers (McConaghy et al., 2005; McConaghy, Lloyd, Hardy, & Jenkins, 2006) and school leaders in rural schools, this chapter builds on several issues previously investigated by the Bush Tracks team. Specifically, it extends the focus on early career rural teachers and rural school leadership outlined in Chapter 7 (e.g. Graham, Paterson & Miller, 2008; Miller, Graham & Paterson, 2006) by exploring the experiences of late-career female leaders in rural schools. Delving into the experiences and preferred styles of leadership of experienced female school leaders is a new direction for research in rural contexts.