This handbook begins with a foundational overview of rural education, examining the ways in which definitions, histories, policies, and demographic changes influence rural schools. This foundational approach includes how corporatization, population changes, poverty, and the role of data affect everyday learning in rural schools. In following sections, the contributors consider how school closures, charter schools, and district governance influence decision making in rural schooling, while also examining the influence of these structures on higher education attainment, rural school partnerships, and school leadership. They explore curriculum studies in rural education, including place-based and trauma-informed pedagogies, rural literacies, rural stereotype threat, and achievement. Finally, they engage with issues of identity and equity in rural schools by providing an overview of the literature related to diverse populations in rural places, including Indigenous, Black, and Latinx communities, and exceptional learners. Importantly, this handbook applies theoretical tools to rural classroom experiences, demonstrating the potential of work centered at the intersection of theory, rurality, and classroom practice. Each section concludes with a response by an international scholar, situating the topics covered within the broader global context.

A reversal in rural-to-urban migration patterns is creating increasing interest in the quality of education in rural areas and in techniques for meeting educational needs in sparsely populated regions. Wholesale urbanization of rural schools generally is rejected as a potential solution: it is logistically inefficient; centralization and standardization are met with growing resistance; and conventional solutions to educational problems produce uneven results when applied to rural areas. This book addresses the broad spectrum of rural education issues within OECD member countries. The authors identify innovative programs, policies, and strategies and point toward the more promising paths for rural school improvement. They also issue warnings about some of the blind alleys and dead ends that can be encountered. The major topics covered include delivery systems, in-school innovations, support mechanisms, and community-school linkages.

This edited collection challenges the urban-centric nature of much feminist work on gender and education. The context for the book is the radical reconfiguration of rural areas that has occurred in recent decades as a result of globalisation. From a range of diverse national contexts, including Kenya and South Africa, Australia and Canada, and the United States and Pakistan, authors explore the intersections between masculinity, femininity, and rurality in education. In recognition of the heterogeneity of categories such as ‘rural girl’ and ‘rural boy’ they attend to how educational exclusions can be magnified by differences in relation to social locations such as class, race, or sexuality. Similar critical insights are brought to bear as authors examine what it means to be a male or female teacher in rural environments. Contributors draw on data ranging from contemporary feature films to historical materials, along with detailed ethnographic work and participatory approaches, to produce a compelling narrative of the need to understand education as experienced by those who are not part of the urban majority. This book was originally published as a special issue of Gender and Education.

Rural Education in America provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the diversity and complexity of rural communities in the United States and for helping rural educators implement and evaluate successful place-based programs tailored for students and their families. Written by educators who grew up in rural America and returned there to raise their children, the book illustrates how efficacy is determined by the degrees to which instruction, interventions, and programs address the needs and strengths of each unique rural community. Geoff and Sky Marietta weave research, compelling case studies, and personal experience to illustrate effective approaches along the P-16 pipeline. Emphasizing the value and vitality of these communities, the authors advocate for solutions that fit the sociocultural and historical reality of the community, rather than strategies that fundamentally support out-migration. They also provide tools that can be used to evaluate rural educational initiatives and implement place-based strategies that are aligned with the strengths of a particular community. Rural Education in America includes examples from a range of geographic locations, including Eastern Washington, Montana, Ohio, northern Minnesota, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, and the Navajo Nation. Core chapters focus on critical issues for advancing rural education including early literacy, STEM education, and college completion while highlighting successful programs and partnerships in these areas. This book presents a vision of what rural education can be and how it can attend to the well-being of the people, places, and regions that it serves.

"A collection of essays examining the various social, cultural, and economic intersections of rural place and global space, as viewed through the lens of education. Explores practices that offer both problems and possibilities for the future of rural schools and communities, in the United States and abroad"--Provided by publisher.

One billion people worldwide live in slums and that figure is predicted to reach 2 billion by 2030. This new volume from UN-HABITAT unpacks the complex social and economic issues using the novel conceptual framework of the urban divide.

This publication presents the proceedings of a conference that took stock of achievements China has made in agricultural finance and credit infrastructure and discussed how China could best address future challenges in this area.

The purpose of this book is to highlight the work of teacher educators in the field of rural education. In this book, education faculty who work in teacher education study the ways in which one’s identity impacts one’s teaching and the partnerships with rural schools. Although the field of research on teacher preparation has an abundance of studies on preparing students for the challenges of urban settings, there is much less emphasis on rural education, despite the prevalence of rural schools. This book problematises notions of rural or rurality which is often considered via a deficit or a generalised model where a stereotype of one kind of rural is outlined. Developing more multi-faceted understandings of rurality is a key to attracting and retaining teachers who understand the complexities and opportunities of living and working in rural spaces.

This book provides authentic accounts of the effects of the revolutionary political reform experienced in the past half century on education in Europe’s considerable rural hinterland. These reforms include the liberation of the Baltic and Eastern European states from Soviet communist domination, the ‘eurozone’ economic crises, and the current and future migration of people fleeing war and poverty from the Middle East and Africa. Overshadowing these events are so-called global forces which champion economies of scale and pressurize academic performance as keys to economic success. Trapped in this distal whirlwind of change are 1000s of small and/or rural elementary schools and the life chances of more 1000s of young children. The research presented here unveils the unseen and under-reported consequences of top-down, urban-oriented educational policies on children’s and communities’ experience of place and space. Exposure of these conditions in rural Europe is long overdue, but obscured for decades by political extremes of left and right. Yet, the lived reality of peremptory and swathing school closure programmes, and poverty inflicted on rural populations in parts of Eastern Europe is relatively unreported in the western educational literature – a situation exacerbated by the virtual invisibility of rural educational research generally. The chapters in this book reveal the insights of social science scholars from 11 European countries including those from low GDP, formerly soviet bloc countries, recently enabled to present their research at western European conferences such as the European Educational Research Association. Their research will inform and alert education academics, researchers and professionals to these rural European educational contexts. The research methodologies reported are diverse and innovative. The national context chapters are complemented by overview chapters which survey and synthesise (i) definitions and conceptualisations of rural, (ii) pan-European appraisal of educational, structural and geospatial statistics on small and rural schools, and (iii) identify key messages for better understanding of the rural situation in European research, policy and practice. Crucially, despite the gloom, the authors report positive strategies for rural school survival at governmental and/or school and community levels, that include community involvement, rural educational tourism, and deliberative inter-community school network planning.