Interventions in the quality of research training provided in universities today focus largely on educating supervisors and monitoring their performance as well as student progress. More private than any other scene of teaching and learning, postgraduate supervision -and more generally the pedagogic practices of the PhD -has largely remained unscrutinised and unquestioned. This article explores the problematic character of ideas of autonomy and the independent scholar that underpin the traditional practices of postgraduate pedagogy, particularly in the humanities and social sciences disciplines. These ideas are found to guide the practices of several different models of the supervisory relationship, whether they be of a pastoral care or more distant kind. The gendered character of the ideas of autonomy and the subject of knowledge that underlie these practices of postgraduate pedagogy are examined, as is the paradoxical nature of the processes of the production of the autonomous scholar self. The article concludes by suggesting some possible lines of thought for the future in addressing the problems in doctoral education identified through this analysis.

This paper aims to contribute to educators' understanding of the contextualist nature of literacy, specifically in its relation to school learning. A particular view of literacy is proposed, as comprising three intermeshing dimensions: the operational, the cultural, and the critical. A notion of subject-specific literacy is presented which acknowledges the significance of the school subjects as specific contexts for learning and meaning and, via concepts drawn from recent linguistic-semiotic work, seeks to provide greater purchase on the nature of subject-area learning. A case is made for a strategic emphasis on writing in school learning, and also for the importance of notions of register and genre for writing pedagogy generally. The paper is to be seen in relation to considerable work, in Australia and overseas, in the area of language and learning theory, and has a whole-curriculum orientation.

The complex interconnection among issues affecting rural—regional sustainability requires an equally complex program of research to ensure the attraction and retention of high-quality teachers for rural children. The educational effects of the construction of the rural within a deficit discourse are highlighted. A concept of rural social space is modelled, bringing together social, economic and environmental dimensions of (rural—regional) sustainability. This framework combines quantitative definitional processes with more situated definitions of rural space based on demographic and other social data, across both geographic and cultural formations. The implications of the model are examined in terms of its importance for teacher education.

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This paper explores some of the political and methodological challenges involved in researching rural education. It begins by outlining the situation in Australia regarding the relationship between social justice and rural education. It first describes the disadvantages experienced by many rural communities and presents an analysis of rural educational achievement in Australia. The paper then argues the limitations of traditional and established notions of social justice and, in this context, presents Soja’s proposal that spatiality is a third way of understanding the world. The paper is organized and informed by the principle that what matters, first and foremost, is the nature of the research problem, with decisions about methodology following, and shaped accordingly.

paperback) ISBN 978-90-8790-731-0 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-8790-732-7 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers,

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The impact and implications of the new information technologies as new intensities of media culture have only recently begun to register in mainstream educational theory and practice. This can be usefully considered in terms of the relationship between education and postmodernism. The paper explores concepts and images arguably peculiar to these new technocultural conditions, with reference specifically to educational crisis, alienation, contemporary youth culture, and technology. The hypothesis is that quite different youth and student subjectivities are currently forming out of the relations and practices of the new information technologies, and hence radical shifts are required in the social and educational imagination regarding young people, schooling and popular culture.