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Rural schools have typically been strong on community but weak on professional learning. Their small size and geographical isolation have meant that much of the recent reform movement focused on professional learning communities has passed them by. But there is no reason why rural educators cannot participate in professional learning networks (PLNs) and benefit from heightened levels of collegiality that can be experienced across schools. However, intentional design for deeper collaborative work and face-to-face connection is necessary for PLN members to reap the benefits from increased professional capital and teacher leadership opportunities. This chapter describes the work of the Northwest Rural Innovation and Student Engagement (NW RISE) network in the United States. NW RISE brings together rural educators in gatherings that take place every six months, helps them to form “job-alike” groups focused on academic subject matter or cross-contextual themes, and provides support for shared curriculum design. This chapter describes how rural educators have seized upon the resources in NW RISE to promote student engagement and to develop their professional capacity across the network’s schools.

Recent educational research has demonstrated rural‐urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study seeks to report rural‐urban disparities in achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample of grade four students from four provinces of Pakistan. The study aims to take into account the limitations of previous research, mainly the issues of non‐representative samples and inadequate sampling techniques, by using proportionally adequate sample to address the potential differences in achievement of rural and urban students and how schooling, students and teacher‐related factors account for gap in achievement.

The primary data source for the study was the 2006 national assessment survey of year four students in government school across four provinces in four core subjects. The sample design included a two‐stage stratified random sample, where the major strata of national interest were student and school gender, geographical location and region. First stage involved selecting schools and in the second stage students were selected from schools. The procedure of estimation involved computing the average of each group's achievement scores and attached standard errors, the gap of standard errors and statistical significance of standard errors at 0.05 level.

The results show that rural and urban students had comparable levels of achievement in some of the tested learning areas. In Balochistan province, rural students outperformed their urban counterparts in three out of the four tested subjects. In Punjab and Sindh, urban students performed significantly better in social studies and language tests; scores on social studies and language did not differ significantly across location in the North West. The differences appeared to be partly explained by variation in schooling conditions, students' home background, and teachers' characteristics. Teachers' training turned out to be decisive in determining students' achievement, whereas availability of resources and multi‐grade teaching was less important.

Recent educational research from around the world has demonstrated rural‐urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study is the first attempt to report rural‐urban disparities in academic achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample. The study has employed an appropriate sampling strategy and proportionally adequate sample to address the potential differences in achievement of rural and urban students in four provinces. The findings could therefore be used to guide policy interventions in areas of curriculum differences, schooling conditions, teachers' training and multi‐grade teaching across provinces.

Explores how rural communities support or constrain school‐level processes which enable effective instruction to occur. Grounded in a conceptual framework of school context indicators, reviews the research and literature on rural education to describe rural community characteristics. Then utilizes analytic induction to consider how these characteristics may influence the school processes identified. The findings suggest that rural community influences are not immutable, and that communities can both constrain and enable structural and cultural aspects of schools which shape effective instruction, depending in large part on how the school mediates the community′s influences. Then offers suggestions for research and development in rural schools.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how rural schools and communities responded to the COVID-19 pandemic through compassionate care.

This paper provides “compassion narratives” (Frost et al., 2006, p. 851) from five educators (i.e. the authors) working and/or living in rural communities. Each narrative describes how compassion was witnessed and experienced from various professional positions (which include classroom teacher; building-level leader; district-level leader; special services director and school psychologist; and assistant professor of educational leadership).

The compassion narratives described in this paper demonstrate how various organizations and communities responded to COVID-19 through compassionate care. They also provide a lens for considering how rural schools and communities might sustain compassion in a post-pandemic world.

This paper extends disciplinary knowledge by considering the healing, transformative power of compassion within rural schools and communities – not just in response to COVID-19 but in response to all future adversities.

The purpose of this article is to examine the expectations, challenges and tensions officers describe while engaged with public schools to demonstrate that officers engage with students in public schools in a conscious, goal-oriented process to establish and maintain useful relationships.

Data collection involved 104 semi-structured interviews (including follow up interviews) and 31 focus groups, conducted between 2014 and 2018 with police officers working in rural areas of a province in Atlantic Canada.

Utilizing the concept of social capital, we analyze practices of investments alongside the understanding of rurality as socially interconnected and the rural school as a particular site of interconnectedness for police officers. We demonstrate how, while accumulating social capital, officers face role tension and fundamental barriers when trying to integrate into rural school communities.

By demonstrating the specificities of building social capital in schools and community environments in a rural setting, we contribute to understandings regarding the unique opportunities and challenges faced by police in rural schools in integrating effectively into schools and responding to youth-specific problems.

Strong home-school partnerships consistently and substantially benefit children’s academic and social development. Home-school partnerships are considerably affected by the settings in which they take place (e.g., rural, urban, suburban), the characteristics of the partners (e.g., parents and teachers), and their relationships with one another (parent-teacher partnerships). In rural communities, supportive home-school partnerships promote young children’s success but have proven difficult to implement. African American families with young children residing in rural communities experience unique social and institutional challenges and benefits that are particularly salient for fostering home-school partnerships. Thus, the landscape of rural communities is an important and essential consideration for understanding the intersection between race and home-school partnerships. This chapter focuses on the promise of positive home-school partnerships for rural African American children, their families, and their schools. Home-school partnership as an essential component of children’s academic and social development is defined, and sample home-school partnership intervention programs are described. Finally, existing policy investments related to the facilitation of home-school partnerships are explored and policy recommendations that promote such partnerships are discussed.

As entrepreneurship and market mechanisms are increasingly seen as a central part of public sector reforms to health and education, this chapter examines the entrepreneurial behaviour of public service providers in rural areas of the United Kingdom. Specific questions to be addressed include: How do rural providers (GPs, hospitals, schools) respond to the ‘market’ for provision of public services in rural areas? What are the constraints in acting entrepreneurially in these rural ‘markets’?

This chapter draws on a review of the literature and an empirical study of health care providers and schools with an emphasis on provision in rural areas and non-metropolitan urban areas. The results are based on 130 interviews with public, private and not-for-profit sector providers, and commissioners in health and education. Providers interviewed include schools, primary health care providers (General practitioners) and hospitals.

The challenges facing rural provision are examined. In terms of income generation providers reported the difficulties in having the critical mass required to keep services viable. There was particular attention to finding ways of diversifying income sources to increase turnover. Providers for rural areas are also having to find ways of coping with increased costs compared to urban providers, with limited account taken by the commissioners/buyers of services. The constraints related to introducing entrepreneurial behaviour to individuals who are resistant to risk taking and innovation based on market forces are also examined.

The work is based on a qualitative survey of a number of sectors. Further larger sample work is required to explore the propositions identified in more detail. The policy context has also been changing, with a need to identify how changes in government have affected the nature of entrepreneurship in public services.

The chapter provides policy implications and insights for providers of rural public services. There is a need to encourage diversity of income sources and to encourage collaboration between providers. There is also a need to identify where entrepreneurs in the public, private and social enterprise sectors are unwilling to deliver.

The chapter identifies key theoretical issues related to the role of enterprise in delivering public services. Further insights are provided regarding the role of rurality on both enterprise behaviour and public service delivery.

Low levels of human capital in rural China are rooted in the poor schooling outcomes of elementary school students. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the distribution of academic performance in rural China and identify vulnerable groups.

The authors draw on a data set of 25,892 observations constructed from 11 school-level surveys spanning nine provinces and one municipality in China conducted from 2013 to 2015.

The authors find that the distribution of academic performance is uneven across provinces and subgroups. In general, male students, Han, living in richer counties, living with their parents and studying in rural public schools do better academically than female students, non-Han, living in poorer counties, left behind and studying in private migrant schools in cities.

Using the results of this study, policymakers should be able to better target investments into rural education focusing on at risk subpopulations.

With limited data sources, the research on the academic performance of students in rural China is largely absent. The findings of this study help to fill the gaps in the literature base.

This paper aims to explore innovative education approaches in a rural area of Thailand and the socioeconomic transformation fostered in that area through community-based tourism.

This study examined the elements in a case study that successfully linked “non-formal education” (NFE) channels to community development. More than half the population of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) still lives in rural areas, where poverty is widespread. Numerous programmes have been initiated to address the socioeconomic imbalances of the region, and tourism is now considered a driver for rural economic development. However, the development of human resources in rural areas remains low. Education is considered both an important tool for development and a channel for innovative practices to effect the socioeconomic transformation of rural areas. The data for this case study were sourced from secondary documents such as institutional communication, statistics, iconographic documents and websites. The data were analysed through content analysis and provided the basis for interpretation and conceptualisation of the innovative practices adopted by the school.

This study found that the efforts deployed in setting up a non-formal school in a marginalised rural area placed the community at the centre of the pedagogical approach. NFE, indeed, was found to have the ability to enhance the new concept of sustainability for socioeconomic transformation. It helped to leverage the knowledge gained at school onto other skills such as communication and business and built entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge of newer technology required to develop the tourism industry.

This study is expected to delineate the basis of a framework for innovation in rural education. This framework should be relevant to researchers and practitioners, and could guide local communities in Thailand and other areas of ASEAN.

This is the first study of its kind to examine innovative practices initiated by a specific community school that enhanced tourism and built entrepreneurs. This model can be replicated in other field studies.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the establishment of area schools from two vantage points. The first vantage point is those who were legislatively responsible for public education in South Australia from the mid 1930s through to the end of World War 2. The second is the local community, with references to Karoonda (and districts) in particular.

The paper locates the evolution of area schools in the comprehensive public secondary schooling movement and the practice of borrowing policy initiatives from overseas and other education jurisdictions. Primary source documents have been used extensively throughout the article.

Initial resistance to the closure of small schools to form area schools was overcome by the provision of free bus transport, and the wider availability of secondary education, locally. Originally intended to provide instruction to students who would remain for most of their lives in rural communities, within ten years of opening, area schools became the means of mobility for many.

The continuing exodus of youth from rural areas in search of “greener pastures” has become one of the main issues confronting rural communities as they search for ways to maintain viability in a competitive, market driven economy.

The paper is a rigorously documented historical contribution towards debate and discussion about how governments, and others, may ensure access to secondary education in rural areas in light of demographic and economic factors.