This case study of a Ghanaian rural school district uses a community-based participatory action research to engage with municipal officials, a rural community, and its local school participants to codesign culturally sustainable education strategies. The study triangulated community meeting discussion, interviews, field notes and document analysis…

Calls for a decolonized curriculum in South Africa are gaining momentum. Contrary to the school curriculum that privileges knowledge from a western perspective, indigenous knowledge systems appreciate and draw from local content and forms of knowing. A number of studies have expressed the value of indigenous knowledge systems, and the need for…

Sustainability is a central challenge facing the future viability of Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) communities in rural Australia. Faced with environmental uncertainty and its associated community impacts, sustainability has at once been positioned as the path to a prosperous future and a flash point of community conflict. Key to these tensions has…

From 2005 to 2011, AusAID and the Philippine government launched Strengthening the Implementation of Visayas Education (Project STRIVE) to improve access and quality of education in rural Philippines. Using data from all participating schools (N=308) one question is raised: How successful was the international partnership in implementing education…

This paper describes the rural community participation within the context of an integrated early childhood development program initiated by the government of Indonesia in partnership with UNICEF and AusAID in Central Lombok (2008-2010). Based on purposive interviews with relevant stakeholders, as well as an analysis of past documents, researchers'…

Given the present pace of educational globalization, educators--especially in rural schools--will benefit from an awareness of traditional knowledge as a significant contributor to sustainability. Many countries operate through a system whereby major decision making, especially in such areas as education and health, emanate from state levels of…

Classrooms and their pedagogy have historically been characterised by a disconnection from the community outside, and this trend is particularly problematic for rural schools (Bryden & Boylan, 2004; Corbett, 2006). There is reduced encouragement for teachers to connect classroom and community with the current focus on standardised testing,…

What makes a successful rural P-12 school? This paper will review the notions of a successful school and will challenge the dominant voice of quantitative data as the yardstick for such success. In doing so, this paper will focus on qualitative measures including those aspects which are ignored by the quantitative data. Reference will be made to…

A pilot study was conducted in a regional university setting to promote awareness of the value of affective teaching and learning amongst staff and students. Academic staff and students from diverse disciplines at University of South Australia's (UniSA) Centre for Regional Engagement (CRE) were recruited to the study. The research investigated…

Local rural communities and individuals are increasingly disarmed by the socially transforming processes of post modern times including the globalisation of rural production systems and trade. There is a new climate "in the bush" that is imbued with a deep suspicion that globalisation processes will continue to threaten the…