1 ‘New Ground’ in Teacher Education for Rural and Regional Australia: Regenerating Rural Social Space Jo-Anne Reid and Bill Green, Simone White, Maxine Cooper, Graeme Lock and Wendy Hastings Presented in EDUCATION AND RURAL-REGIONAL SUSTAINABILITY: A SYMPOSIUM AARE, Brisbane, 2008 Our title refers to TERRAnova – the „new ground‟ that we are aiming to claim and cultivate in the area of rural teacher education in Australia. Like others in this symposium, we are aiming to understand the role and significance of education in and for rural-regional sustainability, within larger eco-social dynamics of sustainability and change. A socio-ecological approach to sustainability assumes a multiple perspective, and requires us to work with a parallel and simultaneous attention to people and place, time and space, culture and nature, discourse and practice, reality and hope. Using notions of ecosocial change and sustainability (Lemke, 1995), we draw from an overall conceptual framework within which sustainability is expressly understood in terms of the integration of social, economic and environmental (or ecological) imperatives (McKenzie, 2004; Cocklin & Dibden [ed], 2005). Within a general focus on rural schooling, we are particularly concerned with the issue of rural (teacher) education and the practice of sustainable educational (school) communities for rural-regional sustainability more generally. How to understand the rural as complex social space is the focus of this paper. We explore here the theoretical parameters of TERRAnova as an ARC Discovery Project 1 that aims to describe and theorise successful teacher education strategies (both pre- and in-service) that appear to assist in making rural teaching an attractive, long-term career option for Australian teachers. This objective will be achieved through the identification and analysis of: a) key indicators for success in retaining rural primary and secondary teachers in their situations of practice; b) successful university interventions aimed at promoting rural teaching; and c) successful State-based financial incentive programs aimed at promoting rural teaching. An early challenge for the project team is how to think about rural social space at the present time, and we use this paper to explore a developing conceptual framework that will enable us to think productively about the implications for teaching and teacher education of what characterises and constructs rural social space today. Drawing on earlier research in this area (Green & Reid, 2004; Green & Letts, 2007; see also the recent work of Donehower, Hogg & Schell, 2007), along with contemporary understandings of space and place (Agnew, 1993; Massey, 2005; Cresswell, 2004), the theories of social practice articulated by Bourdieu (1978, 1992) and de Certeau (1984), and also broad Foucaultian notions of social power and subjectivity, we are starting to work with a framework combining quantitative measurement and more qualitative understandings of rural space. These are based on demographic and other social data that works with constructions of rurality in both geographic and cultural terms. This supports the development of a theoretical argument for understanding the rural today – and also for coming to know and prepare for teaching in rural communities – in terms of the interrelation of industry, environment and Indigeneity as key definitional aspects of contemporary rural social space. The Rural Problem in Teacher Education As teacher education academics working in an inland rural location, and committed to producing graduates from our institution who will want to teach and will teach well in and for rural and remote communities, these issues are central to the practice and research of all members of this research team. And as we have argued elsewhere (Reid & Green, 2003; Green & Reid, 2004), the challenge of providing high-quality education to Australian children in rural and remote locations is both ongoing and significant. In 2003 we argued that “„[r]ural Problems‟ in education have dogged our nation from before its inception,” noting that over a century ago a “Pastoral and Agricultural” Sub - Committee of the NSW Legislative Council and Assembly, reporting to an inquiry into educational issues in 1904, raised “an important question in regard to the country teacher”. This problem related to the already well -established perception that “frequent changes, with the hope of ultimate appointment to a city school, tend to lessen the teacher‟s interest in the education of the rural child. Indeed, it was suggested t hat the teacher‟s own unrest might tend to lessen the rural-mindedness of the children, and to create in them an ill-defined urge towards city life” (NSW Parliament 1904, p. 5; cited in Reid & Green 2003, p. 7). The report of this 1904 inquiry noted that improvement in the quality and dedication of rural teachers might be achieved through the implementation of: 1 Rethinking Rural Teacher Education; Sustaining Schooling for Sustainable Futures, ARC Discovery Project 2008-2010.