“And twelve months later, we are still waiting…”: Insights into teaching and use of ICT in rural and remote Australian schools

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the combined data sets from a large ARC (Australian Research Council) funded study on the declining enrolments of female students in high school information technology subjects, and a SiMERR (Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia) study of 9 rural or remote schools in the state of Queensland. The aim of examining the combined data set was to investigate any apparent differences between girls' perceptions of studying higher level ICT subjects in rural areas compared to metropolitan areas. The findings of the study highlighted some problems experienced by female students studying outside of metropolitan areas. They perceived the subject offerings to be 'more boring' than their city counterparts and reported a lower level of home ownership. The paper offers possible explanations for the findings and strongly recommends that strategies need to be implemented to overcome these problems.