31st National SPERA Conference

The Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA) and Deakin University invite you to attend the 31st National SPERA Conference, Mapping education policy landscapes: Rurality and rural futures.

The 2015 conference will bring together a range of teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, academics, pre-service teachers, community members and parents who are passionate about rural education. The conference will be a key means of building and strengthening Australia’s rural network and in doing so draw together an increasing body of work focused on the implications of education policy and reform for rural students. This is an opportunity to showcase the achievements of, and opportunities available to, researchers, schools and communities within a complex policy landscape.

Conference sub themes include:

• Education reform
• Student Engagement, Aspiration and Motivation
• Pre-Service / Higher Education
• Curriculum / Pedagogy
• Policy / Place
• Partnerships
• Indigenous / Aboriginal Education, and
• Strengthening and networking rural education research.

Call for Abstracts

Abstracts are to be written in English. The abstract should contain clear information about the aims, nature and content of the paper and, where applicable, a brief statement of results and implications. This should be linked to the conference theme or sub-themes. The author’s name, affiliation and email address should appear in the abstract of 250 words. A  biographical resume and photo of the author (and all co-authors, if any) is required upon acceptance (100 words).

Abstracts are subject to blind-review by members of the program committee. Notification of whether the abstract has been accepted for presentation  will be sent to the author(s) on July 10. Successful presenters will be asked for their audio visual requirements at this time.

The submissions are simply a 250 word abstract and will be presented as a book of abstracts. A future call will go out from the Australian and International Journal of Rural Education (AIJRE) editorial team reminding people to submit full papers to the journal if they wish. The editors are keen to separate the AIJRE journal from the conference.

Important Dates:

250-word Abstracts submission deadline: 26 June 2015
Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 10 July 2015
Author confirmation of conference attendance: 7 August 2015

For more information, or to register, please visit the SPERA website. Early bird pricing ends 7 August 2015.