Guest editors' introduction to special theme issue [of Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development]: Challenging spaces

Abstract

[Rationale]: This special issue of Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development explores the theme of ‘Challenging spaces: Educational provisional and possibilities in contemporary regional and rural communities’. This theme provides the framework within which the papers presented in this volume offer multiple engagements with the proposition that spaces – whether cultural, geographical, institutional or whatever – are economic and political constructions. The articles offer different theoretical perspectives for making sense of the constructions of space within various regional and rural educational contexts. While regional and rural spaces are sometimes represented as “other” to their metropolitan and urban counterparts, thereby challenging those residents in potentially marginalising ways, the articles demonstrate the several ways in which those same residents participate in challenging the bases of their marginalisation, by means of a wide range of approaches and strategies to shape educational provision in terms of possibilities that are more appropriate and empowering to themselves. Thus the aim of this issue is to map ways in which regional and rural education is both challenging for members of those communities and an opportunity for those members to challenge the intent and impact of that education.