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…

Perhaps the most maligned group of people in the United States, atheists and other nonbelievers (e.g., agnostics and freethinkers) reside everywhere and are employed in every field. Disclosure of nonbelief generally imposes costs, such as alienation from family and associates or even loss of employment. As a result, nonbelievers often disguise…

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,…

"Going Further" presents a roadmap to the works of the ACCLAIM (Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics) Research Initiative, the research effort of one the Centers for Learning and Teaching (CLTs) created with a grant (2001-2005) from the National Science Foundation. The Center began…

The teaching of mathematics, which arguably is so abstract as to transcend place and community and even culture (according at least to a Platonic view of mathematics), will seem to some observers particularly ill-suited to instruction in place- or community- or culture-based approaches. Nevertheless, current thinking in mathematics education,…

To date, mathematics education research has rarely engaged issues that could be considered relevant to rural policy and practice. In particular, few research reports in mathematics education have involved the Appalachian region in a way that draws rural-specific conclusions. This manuscript represents an attempt to identify research questions that…