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Journal of Research in Rural Education, Winter, 2003, Vol. 18, No. 3, 145-151 Transient Teachers: Mixed Messages of Schooling in Regional Australia Carmen Mills and Trevor Gale Monash University, Australia This article explores the transience and mobility of teachers working in an isolated community: a secondary school in regional Australia. Drawing on parent, student, and teacher interviews, we ask: how should we understand these teacher commitments to schooling and how does this influence parents’ and students’ commitments and understandings of the “out- side” value of their community? Responses to these questions are theorized utilizing the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu. Drawing on this work we argue that, even though teachers in this context are the bearers of highly prized capitals, they act more as gatekeepers than as their distributors and/or challengers. While we conclude that teachers may need to ad- dress their mobility and the messages this conveys in order to make a difference in such schools and communities, we also acknowledge that there are complexities related to staff residing in the community given its treatment of outsiders. As Danaher, Moriarty, and Danaher (2003) point out in on a daily basis, interacting with the community as far as the introduction to this issue, Australians living in the bush the boundaries of the school day dictate. or the outback have reputations “for being tough, resilient, In exploring the effects on students and the community innovative, and able to make do with scarce and sometimes of these teachers’ mobility, this article draws on 23 semi- inadequate resources” (p. 131). In this article, however, we structured interviews with teachers, parents, and students, suggest that a disposition of makin