In their recent article, "Motives for Dissertation Research at the Intersection between Rural Education and Curriculum and Instruction," Howley, Howley, and Yahn (2014) (see ERIC Document: EJ1040785) describe a rigorous and time-consuming study examining rural education dissertations written over the last 25 years. Howley, Howley, and…

The three rejoinders that follow engage ideas in Amy Azano's critique (q.v.) (see ERIC Document: EJ1048750) of the study of dissertations with a dual focus on rural education and curriculum and instruction (C&I). Considering the issues Amy raises about authors and authority, the allusion to Luigi Pirandello's great twentieth century…

Jean Stockard's (2011) article in the "Journal of Research in Rural Education," "Increasing Reading Skills in Rural Areas: An Analysis of Three School Districts," offers a productive opportunity to discuss the standardization of language and literacy teaching and learning in rural schools. The purpose of this response is to (re)initiate…

The author appreciates the opportunity to reply to Professor Eppley's comment on her paper that was recently published in the "Journal of Research in Rural Education" (Stockard, 2011b). Eppley's paper contains numerous statements that misrepresent both the content of the author's original paper and the social science literature as well as a number…

This article presents the author's response to Karen Eppley's "Reading Mastery as Pedagogy of Erasure". Eppley's commentary (2011) on Dr. Stockard's article, "Increasing Reading Skills in Rural Areas: An Analysis of Three Rural School Districts" (Stockard, 2011), uses selected details as points of departure for a critique of Reading Mastery, a…

This essay explains the relevance of fiction to the practice of rural education research, in so doing engaging questions about the nature and purposes of research and, therefore, of science itself. Although many may assume science and fiction (in this account, novels) harbor contrary purposes and devices, this essay argues that, to the contrary,…

In my book "Learning to Leave: The Irony of Schooling in a Coastal Community" (Corbett, 2007) I make the claim that there is a deep and established connection between formal education and mobility out of rural areas. The book reports on a study undertaken in a coastal community in Atlantic Canada focusing on the educational and life experiences…

Summarizing the findings of his study in southwestern Nova Scotia coastal fishing villages, Mike Corbett (2009), in his article "Rural Schooling in Mobile Modernity: Returning to the Places I've Been" lays out several arguments, including the following: First, that formal education "has been and continues to be...a key institution of…

In "Learning to Leave," Michael Corbett argues that: (1) education has served as a tool to disassociate students--both physically and culturally--from the places from which they come, particularly if they are from rural places, in effect creating an ambivalence toward education; (2) the ways in which individuals express this ambivalence is shaped,…

Michael Corbett's writing on the irony of schooling in rural places inspires the author to reconsider how place shapes his commitments and his learning as a White, educated class, land- and place-attached American male. In a time of climate change, economic collapse, and other related cultural and ecological crises, people's assumptions about…

In this commentary, the author focuses on the central point of Michael Corbett's book "Learning to Leave". Education, and in particular what is called "rural" education, is premised on loss. This loss is often not fully articulated, but it is deep and abiding. It is registered in efforts to stop the flow of people and resources, to resist…

In this article, the author offers his responses to the commentaries made by Arlie Woodrum (2009), Susan Faircloth (2009), David Greenwood (2009), and Ursula Kelly (2009) on his book "Learning to Leave," as well as his article, "Rural Schooling in Mobile Modernity: Returning to the Places I've Been." Each of the commentators speaks to questions of…

How do individuals know when, and what, to resist? Alan Schoenfeld, in the March 2006 issue of "Educational Researcher," tells a story of resistance that all math educators, and all curriculum specialists, need to consider. Schoenfeld titled his story, "What Doesn't Work: The Challenge and Failure of the What Works Clearinghouse to Conduct…

Rural children and youth represent a substantial minority of U.S. students. The author of this commentary contends that the unique educational needs of rural communities have been largely ignored by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) and that rural schools are treated as the "poor country cousins" of the U.S. education system. Recent efforts…

Offering a response to the question, "What rural education research is of most worth?", the authors recommend an approach very different from the one taken by Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, and Dean (2005) in their consideration of the rural education research literature. They remind readers that about 150 years ago, Herbert Spencer put a similar…