PUTTING RURALITY ON THE AGENDA: Beginning Teachers in Rural Schools
98 Abstracts
Ken Appleton
Faculty of Education & Creative Arts
Central Queensland University
A paper presented as part of the symposium on Putting Rurality on
the Agenda chaired by Marie Brennan at the Australian Association for
Research in Education annual conference, Adelaide, 29 November - 4 December,
1998.
PUTTING RURALITY ON THE AGENDA
Beginning Teachers in Rural Schools
Ken Appleton
Faculty of Education & Creative Arts
Central Queensland University
It is not uncommon for beginning teachers in Queensland
to be assigned their first teaching placement in a rural area. There are
indications that many of these teachers stay there for the minimum time
that they have to, and then seek to relocate to a coastal city, usually
in the south-east corner of the state. This raises questions as to how
the rural experience is felt and interpreted by beginning teachers, especially
within the framework of their induction years. My contribution to this
discussion of rurality therefore focuses on beginning teachers. It draws
from some of the literature, over twenty years of experience with students
and teachers in rural areas, and a research project which focused on beginning
teachers and their science teaching. This paper is consequently structured
as a set of ideas which may stimulate further discussion.
It seems that many teachers view rural service
as either an imposition to be endured, or as an opportunity to live in
a desirable location and community (Boylan & McSwan, 1998). Beginning
teachers too seem to view it in similar ways, though over time such perceptions
may change. Those who view the experience positively tend to do so because
of their roots in the community (or a similar one), and those who do not
tend to do so because of perceived isolation, which has a number of facets.
Boylan and McSwan highlight some of the stereotypes associated with rural
teaching assignments, and point to research, including their own, which
explores the clearly identifiable exceptions to the stereotypes.
If this is so, then a key aspect of constructing
a theoretical understanding of rurality for teachers is their perceptions
of the teaching-in-a-rural-community experience, their past experiences,
and the local community views of their rural experience. I would postulate
that these considerations are all bound together in the notions of identity
and community (such as explored, for instance, by Stevenson, 1998).
Rurality
Before delving into that thought further, what is meant
by "rurality" needs to be clarified. I suggest that in Queensland, there
are three rather than the two categories of rurality suggested by Boylan
& McSwan (1998). They suggested "remote" and "provincial" categories,
the latter being those within 100 km of a large centre. I would suggest
a third category of "mining town." This category is characterised by more
than remoteness: there is also a pervasive attitude of temporary residency.
This is seen in behaviour such as leaving town for a coastal city at every
opportunity, and identifying themselves in terms of where they came from
and how long they intend to stay. There are, of course, exceptions to this
generalisation; some residents are long term and have settled permanently
into the town in a similar way to the long-staying teachers studied by
Boylan and McSwan.
A memorable example of "mass evacuation" to
the coast is expressed in the words of a beginning teacher newly appointed
to a mining town:
Interviewer: So you'd spend a few weekends here?
Teacher: None.
Interviewer: None?
Teacher: I've spent four in the year.
Interviewer: So where do you go?
Teacher: To [coastal city].
Interviewer: What's that three or four hours [driving time]?
Teacher:Three hours, yeah I head off at 2.30 Friday afternoons. There's
nothing here to do on the weekends [in the author's experience, the driving
time would be closer to four hours].
Interviewer: What do most other teachers do?
Teacher:[My friend] goes every weekend. I don't know what the rest
of them do - I've never been here to see it. A lot of them go into [a nearby
larger regional town] I assume. A lot of people here head away on the weekends.
See the other thing I've noticed at this school: you find parents don't
mind taking their kids out of class. Like they will go on holidays two
weeks early because [of] the mine [work requirements]. They may not necessarily
be able to get their holiday on school holidays. I had a girl who was out
of school for three weeks before June because that's when they had their
holidays so they went. Another guy came up from New South Wales and he
went back down for two weeks and he is a kid that struggles, so he needs
to spend as much time in school as possible and they're taking him out
for two weeks because New South Wales holidays are two weeks after ours.
So they don't seem to mind. They'll head off if dad's on five days off
they'll go. They'll go to [several coastal cities mentioned] or somewhere
and you won't see the kids for five days or if that happens to be Monday
to Friday you won't see them. They're gone.
Interviewer: So that happens a lot?
Teacher: Yeah.
I have observed similar behaviour in a other
mining towns in Central Queensland. It is also pertinent to note that this
teacher had spent her early childhood nearby, but had completed her schooling
in the same coastal city to which she retreated every weekend.
Identity and Community
Identity is very much a social phenomenon and is therefore
bound up with the people, the community, in which a person feels comfortable
and "at home" with; but as Stevenson (1998) suggests, it also tends to
be associated with a physical place. Such physical places are associated
with the communities which are seen as occupying those places, such as
the neighbourhood where someone spent their childhood.
Applying these ideas to beginning teachers,
we can see several aspects of identity:
-
personal and social identity (who I am as a person within a family/cultural
group, focusing particularly upon the immediate family group and the place(s)
where I grew up);
-
professional identity (who I am as a teacher, focusing particularly on
the preservice community and university as well as the current school placement);
and
-
desired future social and professional identity (who I aspire to be).
The teacher quoted above had a clear personal
and social identity embedded in the coastal city where she spent her weekends,
based mainly on it being her teenage experience. From her discussion, it
was apparent that she saw herself more as a physical education teacher
than a general primary teacher, and that her future aspirations were not
centred around the mining town.
I would postulate that, where there is a mismatch
between any of these three aspects of identity and the teacher's perception
of the local community, the teacher will feel isolated, and will interpret
many of his/her experiences in that community in terms of isolation. From
both the literature (e.g. Boylan & McSwan, 1998) and my own research,
a major perception of beginning teachers in rural areas focuses on this
idea of isolation. In fact, unless a beginning teacher happened to be appointed
to his/her home town, isolation of some sort would tend to be a consideration.
Consequently, those who identify in some way with the local community,
perhaps because it is their home town, or because they marry into the community,
tend to stay and see benefits in living there. Those who do not identify
with the local community see rural placement as isolation.
Isolation
Inverarity (1984) identified several categories of isolation
for rural teachers:
-
Physical, including geographic and climatic conditions;
-
Interpersonal, focusing on the proximity of family and friends;
-
Cultural, including community expectations and values, cultural differences,
and access to drama, crafts, art and museums;
-
Intellectual, concerned with the professional development, poor teacher
education preparation, and poor school leadership; and
-
Personal, including a lack of contact with people with similar interests
and non-work pursuits
I think there are other elements to these. For
instance, the intellectual category is multilayered, with professional
isolation in terms of teacher to teacher, school to school, and access
to professional support and amenities. I would suggest that teachers in
urban schools could well experience similar feelings about some of these
categories. However, while many of these exist in urban schools, there
is a particular heightened sense for rural teachers. That is, it is their
perception of isolation which is heightened. For instance, a teacher in
a small rural school commented on the difficulty in obtaining resources
for teaching ideas in science. She was desperate enough to travel the necessary
half hour into the nearest regional centre where there was a library of
resources, but saw this a difficulty in teaching science resulting from
her isolation. Yet the experience of many urban teachers would be to have
to drive for at least half an hour to a resource centre; an occurrence
which they would think little of. It seems to be the perception
of isolation that enhances the feeling of being isolated.
Another teacher I visited was located in a
small town about an hour's drive from a major coastal city. Her sense of
isolation was extreme, because her perceived isolation included all five
of Inverarity's categories. The hour's drive was too far for her to commute
(though some colleagues did), her family and friends lived in another city,
she felt she did not fit into the local community's interests and cultural
pursuits, she relished the professional contact which my visit afforded
her as a major event, and she found little to do on the weekends.
This notion of people's perceptions of possible
benefits or deficiencies associated with isolation has been reported elsewhere.
For instance, both Duncum and Cassidy (1993) and Mercer (1997) noted that
many cultural activities are closely associated with rural communities,
but there is a common perception that rural residents are culturally deprived.
Only the very remote might genuinely have a case for having little access
to cultural activity. It is possible that engagement in cultural activities
by many rural residents may be greater than that by urban residents (Mercer,
1997), though its nature may be different. That is, the cultural activities
tend to centre around local people and activities, while many city activities
centre around visiting and/or notable performers/displays.
I would suggest that similar perceptions exist
regarding aspects of teachers' perceived isolation. For instance, Inverarity
(1984) suggested professional isolation as a concern for rural teachers.
Yet in my discussions with a number of beginning rural teachers, many had
very meaningful professional development sessions with colleagues with
whom they had developed a form of mentor-relationship. These relationships
became a critical life-line for the beginning teachers in their early career
development. I have found that rural teachers tend to think that they receive
little or no professional development opportunities, usually with reference
to professional development opportunities centred around visits by specialists.
While this may be true, it would also be true that most urban teachers
would not be able to attend many sessions run by visiting specialists -
most of their professional development would also occur with colleagues.
In this paper, I have suggested that a key
understanding of rurality with respect to beginning teaching can be located
in the teacher's identity and the community (and place) associated with
that identity. If the teaching situation provides a mismatch with an aspect
of the teacher's identity, then a sense of isolation is felt. Although
the isolation may be real in a geographic sense, the perception of isolation
arising from identity mismatch enhances the feeling of isolation and an
urge to move to a place where there is a closer match with his/her identity.
References
Boylan, C., & McSwan, D. (1998). Long-staying rural
teachers: Who are they? Australian Journal of Education, 42 (1),
49-65.
Duncum, P., & Cassidy, H. (1993). Arts education
in isolated areas of Queensland. Rockhampton: Research Centre for Open
and Distance Learning, University of Central Queensland.
Inverarity, D. (1984). Teachers in isolation. Pivot,
11 (6), 17-18.
Mercer, C. (1997). Mapping regional centres. In
W. Mules & H. Millar (Eds.), Mapping Regional Cultures: Discourses
in social contexts. Rockhampton: Rural, Social and Economic Research
Centre, Central Queensland University.
Stevenson, D. (1998). Agendas in place: Urban
and cultural planning for cities and regions. Rockhampton: CQU Press.