Introduction: beyond stock photographs - imagining, experiencing, and researching rural education (Editorial)

Editorial introductions to special issues have a number of generic features. They typically include a review of the literature, for example, and a discussion of areas requiring additional research. As we discussed these generic dimensions in preparing to write this paper, we agreed that they should be rightly bypassed in this instance as they have been comprehensively addressed in recent articles published elsewhere (e.g. Pini & Bhopal, 2017; Pini, Carrington, & Adie, 2015; Pini & Mayes, 2015; Pini, Molestane, & Mills, 2014). With a less than secure template, we thus wondered what we might say about the social and cultural dimensions of rural education. In pondering this question we googled the words ‘education’ and ‘rural’. As one of us scrolled through results, which included policy reports, journals, newspaper articles, and academic papers emanating from a general search, another had the wherewithal to place some boundaries around the search by clicking on the tab ‘images’. She was immediately engaged, exclaiming in some amazement at what she had found. We quickly joined in her search