An Annotated and Select Bibliography on Rural and Remote Education in Australia
An Annotated and Select Bibliography on Rural and Remote Education in Australia Government Document
- Author(s): Australian Human Rights Commission,
- Published: 2001
Abstract: This bibliography has been prepared by the Rural Education, Research and Development Centre, Townsville, Qld according to guidelines established by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to assist in its inquiry into aspects of rural and remote school education provision in Australia. It attempts to include highly relevant, more recent, seminal, theoretical and policy-oriented Australian materials. Only items which directly relate to rural and remote education have been included. More broadly based materials have not been included. Only a few overseas references are included. Materials published since 1990 have been included unless a work published prior to that date is still considered seminally important and has had a substantial impact on the development of policy and research in rural and remote education. It was tempting to include works such as Turney, Sinclair and Cairns' book Isolated schools: Teaching, learning and transition to work (1980), because it was one of the first significant, systematic analyses by Australian educators of the needs of children in rural and remote schools. In the end, it was decided to omit it because of its age. For similar reasons Sher's Rural education in urbanised nations (1981) was also omitted. The construction of a select bibliography of this type is fraught with difficulties. It was particularly difficult to keep the bibliography to a manageable size including as it does research, theoretical and policy-oriented materials, as requested by the Commission. Further, what appears as "seminal" to one person will not appear so to another and changing social, cultural, economic and political imperatives alter perceptions of what publications are important. To validate the selection of items, the draft bibliography was sent for evaluation and review to some fourteen scholars and practitioners in rural education who have a special interest in the various areas. Their comments and suggestions have been incorporated into the final bibliography. The bibliography is presented under the following headings: Rural and remote education in general Education for children with disabilities Teacher training, in-service and retention Income support and funding Distance education and technology Indigenous education Education for non-English speaking background children It proved difficult sometimes knowing where to locate particular publications because their subject matter crossed headings. Under each heading bibliographic references with short annotations are provided. These publications are further listed by type of publication; for example, monographs, journal articles, government reports, conference papers, and book chapters. Within each of these sections, items are listed by date from most recent to least recent.