Disrupting rural futures and teachers' work: Problematising aspirations and belonging in young people's lives

Abstract

Building futures for young people in and out of rural places has been a perennial quest for those interested in education and youth studies. For rural youth, the opportunities education can afford usually necessitates leaving home to study in a regional or metropolitan campus, with added cost and loss for families and communities. Thus, aiming a post-compulsory education for rural students typically involves 'higher stakes' than for their urban counterparts. This chapter examines the impact of the view of education as 'learning to leave' (Corbett in Learning to leave: the irony of schooling in a coastal community. Fernwood Publishing Co., Halifax, 2007) against the backdrop of building the s..