The network of small rural schools in Finland has been radically weakened since the global recession of the 1990s. This article focuses on the social role of rural schools and the phenomenon of school closures. Our aim is to look at rural schools from the viewpoint of local residents and examine how they experience school closures. We seek to hear…

Dissertation literature focusing on issues of curriculum and instruction (C&I) in rural schools has substantially increased since 1987. We located 580 possibly rural C&I dissertations and subsequently identifi ed 194 as probably rural; of these we were able to obtain digital copies of 188 full-length studies. Our purpose was to…

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…

This narrative literature analysis examines the storylines of rural teachers told through published research on rural teachers. Using a narrative analysis approach, we investigated research published between 1970 and 2010--four decades of rural-oriented education research and policy work. Four storylines emerged from our coding of rural-related…

Rural communities contain a largely unacknowledged innovative capacity founded on improvisational traditions. These traditions may be rooted in work practices in agriculture and other rurally-based productive activities but today they have expanded into other lifeworld locations, particularly virtual spaces that accelerate time-space compression.…

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,…

While there is a growing body of work that considers the implications of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for rural schools, literature that critically examines the policy itself is lacking in rural educational research. This critical policy analysis focuses on the highly qualified teacher provision of NCLB as it relates to rural schools. The…

In my 15th and final year as JRRE editor, I identify methodological and substantive shortcomings in the rural education research literature and, in turn, suggest strategies for improvement. I structure my observations around the following considerations: describing the rural context of research, making the rural argument, framing the research…

Experiments that assign intact groups (usually schools) to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. The design of group randomized experiments requires knowledge of the intraclass correlation structure to compute statistical power and to determine the sample sizes required to achieve adequate power. The intraclass…

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…

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…

Howley, Theobald, and Howley (2005) appear to focus on two major issues in their reply to the McREL review (Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, & Dean, 2005): (a) the utility of quantitative study of schools in the "rural lifeworld," and (b) the motivation of McREL staff members for reviewing the content and methods of existing rural education research. The…

In this rejoinder to Howley, Theobald, and Howley's response "What Rural Education Research is of Most Worth? A Reply to Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, and Dean," ("Journal of Research in Rural Education," v20 n18, 2005) to the original paper, "A Look at the Condition of Rural Education," ("Journal of Research in Rural Education," v20 n6, 2005), Arnold…

The authors searched the ERIC and PsycINFO databases for K-12 rural education research studies conducted in the United States and published in journal articles between 1991 and summer 2003. This search was conducted in order to identify topics that appear in the rural education research literature and determine the quality of this research. Only…