The current study examined associations between organized activity involvement, academic achievement, and problem behavior in a sample of youth from a non-agricultural based rural community (M[subscript age] = 15.26, Age range = 11-19 years, N = 456). Analyses examined whether associations varied as a function of adolescent gender and age.…

In this paper, I argue that aesthetic music education philosophy, which undergirds many current music teacher education programs, textbooks, practices, and networks, fosters assumptions that are not applicable to rural settings. I outline and critique the main principles of this philosophy and demonstrate the ways in which music teachers'…

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…

Teachers' conceptions of what they learn and how they professionally develop through their teaching roles are key to classroom practice and learner achievement because they influence teachers' pedagogic approaches and choice of materials, content, and learner activities. This article reports on some of the findings from a doctoral…

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.…

Place-based mathematics education (PBME) has the potential to engage students with the mathematics inherent in the local land, culture, and community. However, research has identified daunting barriers to this pedagogy, especially in abstract mathematics courses such as algebra and beyond. In this study, 15 graduates of a doctoral program in rural…

Interview, document, and observational data were used to examine grade K-2 teachers' and literacy coaches' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of collaborative action research as a professional development initiative in rural schools. Eleven teachers and five literacy coaches in five northern Ontario school districts participated in…

This article addresses the changes in the spatial distribution of elementary schools in Czechia in the second half of the 20th century and the consequences of these changes on the functioning of rural communities. The spatial distribution of elementary schools, the shape of their catchment areas, and the regional and local communities connected…

This study estimates the high school dropout rate in rural and urban areas, the determinants of dropping out, and whether the differences in graduation rates have changed over time. We use geocoded data from two nationally representative panel household surveys (NLSY 97 and NLSY 79) and a novel methodology that corrects for biases in graduation…

Expanding accountability systems that impose policies across all schools have amplified assertions that rural teacher labor markets differ from non-rural labor markets in meaningful ways that complicate rural schools' efforts to comply with the policy directives. The analysis presented here examines this claim by exploring teacher labor market…

Using data gathered from students attending Southeast Community and Technical College in Harlan County, Kentucky, this article discusses how a commitment to place informs and shapes rural students' decisions around post-secondary education, career, and residence. Though some students connected advanced education with rural outmigration, other…

This study examined the leadership practices of seven rural superintendents, selected via a sampling strategy which identified disadvantaged rural districts that had experienced marked increased in test scores during the superintendent's tenure. Researchers examined how the practices of these superintendents were linked to Waters and Marzano's…

The current research examines how social goals and perceptions of what is needed for social status at school relate to school misbehavior and substance use among rural adolescents (N = 683). Results indicate that social goals and perceptions of social status have differential links to problem behaviors depending upon adolescents' achievement.…

Why read? We take a turn in the conversation initiated by Jean Stockard's article, "Increasing Reading Skills in Rural Areas: An Analysis of Three School Districts" (2011a), with a dialog in which we engage the epistemological positions at play within this debate. We understand the different positions as representations of each author's ideas…

This case study focuses on a four-district collaborative that shared services for more than 15 years in an effort to retain rural schools and thereby to preserve community identity. With population losses in the four districts and suburbanization in the largest, the collaborative made extensive use of distance education in addition to itinerant…