Situating Practice In Rural Schools: Transience, Adaptation And Opportunity

The 'Bush Tracks' collective is a team of researchers in the University of New England researching rural schooling. In this paper we describe some of the results of two projects investigating rural pedagogy and rural leadership, including accelerated progression to positions of leadership. Our focus has been on discovering factors associated with the process of teachers' learning to situate their practices in the rural context. Transience of teachers and leaders is common in rural areas. The notion of 'transience' is usually viewed negatively, as part of a deficit model of rural education. A conclusion of our research is that transience should be viewed positively, as providing opportunities and acting as a catalyst for the development of good teachers and good leaders.