TERRAnova
This project seeks to discover the nature of successful strategies for preparing, attracting and retaining high quality teachers for rural and remote schools in five Australian states. It is conceived as a national partnership between teacher education researchers with a history of institutional commitment to rural education, and whose pre-service programmes produce graduates for positions in rural schools.
It will use a longitudinal series of annual national surveys of two cohorts of student teachers taking up university and state incentive schemes for rural teaching, with follow-up focus group interviews each year. These participants will be re-surveyed and followed up at interview again as beginning teachers over their first two years of teaching.
In addition, case studies of rural schools identified by communities and systems as successful in retaining good teaching staff will be developed in order to identify the nature of successful teacher education and recruitment strategies that make making rural teaching an attractive and long-term career option at both primary and secondary levels.
