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Developing countries in many parts of the world have experienced a disturbing trend in the differential pace of economic development among urban and rural communities. These inequities have been observed in education systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America where researchers have documented differences not only in resource allocation but also in the academic performance among students in urban and rural schools. Recently researchers have shifted their focus from examining financial and physical resources to investigating the nature and impact of differences in human resources. The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in school organization processes associated with learning-centered leadership and teacher learning among urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. Teacher trust and teacher agency were proposed as possible mediators of leadership effects on teacher learning.

This study employed a cross-sectional survey design. The authors collected survey data from 1,011 teachers and 60 principals in 30 urban and 30 rural primary schools in Thailand. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping were used to analyze the proposed model of leadership and teacher professional learning. More specifically, data analysis was aimed at determining the nature of relationships among the constructs in the conceptual model and whether patterns of leadership and teacher learning differed in urban and rural primary schools.

The results affirmed a model whereby school leadership exerted significant indirect effects on teacher learning in both urban and rural primary schools. Data analyses determined that the path of leadership effects moved through trust to agency and then to teacher professional learning. Thus, while the authors found a strong direct effect of leadership on teacher trust, there were only small direct effects of leadership on teacher agency and no meaningful direct effects of leadership on teacher professional learning. Thus, the research affirmed a full mediation model of leadership effects on teacher learning. Finally, the study also affirmed that the measured variables were perceived as significantly stronger in the urban schools than in the rural schools.

The research expands on prior research on the “achievement gap” in Thailand by demonstrating the existence of a similar “human resource gap” when comparing urban and rural school leaders and teachers. This study implies that addressing the gap in student achievement will require action aimed at building the capacity of the principals and teachers who work with the rural pupils.

These results suggest differences in the quality of human resources between urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. There may be potential benefit to be gained from providing training focused on “learning-centered leadership” for principals and middle level leaders, as well as expanding access to quality professional development opportunities for rural teachers.

This study explores a program to transform rural schools in Kwara State, Western Nigeria, into community knowledge hubs by leveraging local networks and community-based workshops. It aims to demonstrate how local resources are utilized to enhance educational outcomes and community engagement in rural settings.

Employing a qualitative research methodology, the study analyzes the implementation of this program through interviews with 13 teachers and in-field participation, examining the perspective of local teachers.

The findings reveal that this program has significantly enriched community engagement with practical skills both for students and the adult population, fostering collaboration between community and schools. Local teachers, leveraging their rural networks and knowledge, have been central to mobilizing networks and integrating practical education that addresses community-specific issues.

The critical role of participatory educational strategies is highlighted, designing interventions for the distinct needs of communities. It notes the variability in potential outcomes due to the self-designed networks by local teachers, suggesting a need for exploration into how these networks’ configurations are developed in different places.

This study advocates for the creation of comprehensive programs including all local stakeholders in developing a dedicated support community network. It emphasizes non-formal education to offer a variety of learning experiences, which may be more effective in fostering community-wide educational engagement.

This study contributes to the academic literature by highlighting the critical role of local networks in African rural education settings. It provides a novel perspective on how rural schools can serve as hubs for community development and lifelong learning for the whole community, extending beyond traditional educational outcomes only for students.

This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework for integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) into teaching practices for educators in rural Ghana lacking computer and internet access. Bridging the rural–urban digital divide is critical for equitable quality education. This research identifies distinct infrastructure, financial, human, and socio-cultural challenges of ICT adoption in underserved Ghanaian schools through an exhaustive literature review. The framework provides tailored strategies to empower teachers to leverage ICT for innovative pedagogy despite limitations. Ultimately, the goal is to offer pragmatic, evidence-based solutions to advance ICT-enabled instruction and digital equity in marginalized settings.

This study utilizes a qualitative literature review methodology to develop a conceptual framework for ICT teaching techniques tailored to the rural Ghanaian context. Published empirical studies, theoretical papers, and reports focused on ICT education in developing countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, were systematically reviewed across multidisciplinary databases. Relevant theories and models, like TPACK and SAMR, were analyzed to determine appropriate modifications for the framework design. The proposed strategies emphasize affordable technologies, teacher training, localized content, and culturally relevant pedagogies selected based on evidence from literature to address the unique barriers and needs of the rural setting.

The literature review revealed profound infrastructure, financial, human, and socio-cultural barriers to ICT adoption in rural Ghanaian schools. These include lack of electricity, internet, hardware, and software alongside inadequate teacher training and support. The proposed conceptual framework offers solutions including leveraging low-cost technologies like mobile devices, prioritizing teacher professional development, developing localized digitally-enabled resources, and fostering community participation. Culturally relevant pedagogies are also emphasized. This tailored, evidence-based approach holds promise for enhancing ICT-enabled instruction and bridging digital divides to promote equitable quality education. Further findings will emerge through framework implementation and evaluation.

This conceptual framework requires implementation and evaluation to truly determine its impact and effectiveness in the intended rural Ghanaian context. As a literature review, primary data collection was not undertaken. Practical application of the framework in schools can yield direct insights through surveys, interviews, observations, and analysis of key educational outcomes pre and post-implementation. Comparisons with control groups may further illuminate its efficacy. Monitoring and adaptation over time is also essential. Ultimately, this research sets the foundation for praxis-oriented work transforming ICT integration in marginalized communities to advance digital equity and inclusion.

This research provides an evidence-based, context-aware framework with pragmatic solutions to enhance ICT-enabled teaching and learning in underserved rural Ghanaian schools. It offers guidance to teachers, administrators, and policymakers on integrating technology despite infrastructure and resource constraints. The emphasis on cost-effective innovations, educator training, localized content, and community participation can inform planning and investments in ICT education. Broader applications include adapting the framework for other developing country contexts facing comparable challenges. Overall, this work promotes digital equity and quality education access, catalyzing social development and aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This research highlights the urgent need to address digital divides exacerbating educational inequalities between rural and urban communities in Ghana. Lack of technology access and utilization in rural schools threatens to widen gaps in skills, capabilities, and opportunities for students. Strategic integration of ICT can promote social inclusion, cultivate digital literacy, and equip youth to participate in the global digital economy, thereby enhancing prospects. More broadly, advancing digital equity and ICT-enabled education empowers marginalized groups, fosters community empowerment, and drives progressive social change. This work underscores that localized, context-appropriate solutions are pivotal for promoting development and social justice.

This research fills a crucial gap by proposing a conceptual framework tailored specifically for integrating ICT in teaching practices in rural Ghanaian schools lacking digital access, responding to context-specific barriers and needs. While extensive literature examines ICT education models globally, few studies offer localized strategies for resource-constrained environments. This framework adapts established models based on a systematic literature review, emphasizing affordability, capacity building, and cultural relevance. By synthesizing evidence-based, pragmatic solutions to advance ICT-enabled instruction in marginalized settings, this work provides a valuable foundation for praxis transforming rural education. The localization approach could inform frameworks for other developing regions.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of financial factors on motivating college students to consider teaching in hard-to-staff rural schools. The role of perceived respectability of the profession was also explored.

This work relies on an explanatory sequential mixed-method design, that surveyed college students across all majors at a regional public university, then interviewed a subset of participants to improve understanding. Quantitative and qualitative results were compared and synthesized.

Results from an ordinal logistic regression demonstrate the importance of base salary, retirement benefits and respondents’ view of the respectability of the teaching profession as influential for their willingness to teach in the rural target school district. These findings were validated by the qualitative results that found perceptions of respectability had both a joint and separate influence with salaries. Results also demonstrate that most students were amenable to rural teaching and to lower starting salaries than their current chosen occupation, provided their individual minimum salary threshold was met ( x ¯ = 36 percent above the state average beginning teacher salary).

Few empirical studies exist that examine college student recruitment into rural hard-to-staff districts via a multimodal narrative. This study addresses this, focusing on college students across majors to explore both recruitment into the district and into the profession. This work is relevant considering the financial disinvestment in traditional public education and the de-professionalization of the teaching profession that has led to the recent season of teacher strikes in the USA.

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.

Our purpose is to examine the outcomes of using video as a reflection tool in peer-to-peer coaching with rural teachers as part of a literacy coaching professional development project.

This qualitative case study presents findings from a professional development project serving rural educators interested in becoming literacy coaches. Using a peer coaching model, literacy coaching participants video recorded two literacy coaching cycles capturing pre-conferencing, lesson modeling, and post-conferencing. Reflection was facilitated through face-to-face discussion and online technologies (discussion forums and e-mail).

Face-to-face sessions were integral in fostering participant reflection. Technology challenges impacted the extent to which participants engaged in and valued video as a reflection tool. Participants repurposed video reflection for self-identified professional and pedagogical purposes.

Video reflection can be used as a part of multimodal set of tools to collaborate with teachers. Face-to-face interaction is important in supporting rural teachers’ use of video reflection. Teacher educators generally need more on-site authentic involvement to gain emic perspectives when working with the rural sites in order for the video tasks to be more effective and meaningful for the teachers. Repurposing video reflection can be an expression of agency in meeting teacher needs.

Recent changes in legislation have generated discussions among educators throughout the United States. The NCLB Act and IDEIA added new requirements for schools, and raised some questions regarding the intersection of the two laws as they impact special education. Following are discussions of these laws and what they mean to rural school systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how rural teachers provided a PLC by leveraging virtual technologies to connect educators of like subject disciplines from several schools, foreign and domestic.

A phenomenological case study-based approach was leveraged to investigate established vPLCs at schools (Creswell, 2013; Stake, 2010). Qualitative data were collected from multiple sources to obtain rural teacher perceptions on the impact vPLCs had on their practice (Creswell, 2013).

Teacher collaborative teams build relationships comparable to teams that met face to face as part of a similar PLC and PD experience. Participant reflections in this investigation showed that rural educators favored face-to-face meetings; however, vPLCs provided similar teacher experiences to that of the face-to-face PBL model. Results indicated that educators recognized virtual collaboration just as valuable a tool for enabling PLCs than face-to-face collaborations while still offering similarities to improved teacher practice.

The research was limited to teachers in rural settings in the USA (Texas) and in the Dominican Republic. The research was limited to teacher perceptions of change, and observed changes as part of their participation in a research-based virtual PLC model. The research was limited to the school setting over an academic year.

The findings from this study have practical implications for rural teachers and school implementation of a professional learning community model.

The promise provided by this study is that vPLCs may provide opportunity for rural schools to provide a job-embedded professional development model (Croft et al., 2010) for otherwise isolated teachers (Barrett et al., 2015).

After Jomtien¹ under the goal of providing “education for all” a great number of countries made a strong commitment to extend the benefits of education to the poorest sectors of their population. Efforts have been made in the following years to fulfill this promise. But the issues associated with understanding and addressing disadvantaged populations are multiple and complex. Moreover the strategies followed by a number of countries have been framed under structural assumptions inherently limiting and undermining the intentions of the policies that gave them origin. Seeking to understand the challenges and complexities of change in these contexts, I analyze Mexico's assumptions framing educational policy toward the rural and indigenous poor.² I argue that a number of initiatives may fail to fully address the needs of these populations due to the assumptions underlying these policies which end up resting agency to the poor, their children, and to their teachers and schools. After describing the theoretical framework used in this chapter and providing a brief description of Mexico's political economy, I examine Mexico's past and current government policies toward the poor and look at the spaces that have opened up for innovation due to growing relationships with the global economy and the global community and to relationships between Mexico's central and local governments. I suggest that compulsory early childhood education is one obvious avenue (complementing policies such as Federalizacion and teacher education) to correct centuries of injustice and neglect. I discuss the implications of this analysis within the context of the current decentralization movement and the growing discontent among the rural poor.