This paper provides a case study of teacher retention in rural Uganda focussing on the importance of rural experience and cultural connections. We argue that this study illustrates how rural parents and teachers reciprocally influence each other, and that homegrown and culturally-similar rural teachers bridge parents with the school both…

This piece responds to the content of each of the articles in this issue and raises questions in response to some explicit and implicit themes including particularly the way that differently positioned rural youth are "oriented" in the course of their educational experience. These articles are read as accounts of people in place that…

School farms were established in Tasmania in the 1930s following a visit of an Australian eduation official to the United States and the United Kingdom. There are still more than 30 school farm operations functioning in some capacity throughout the state, unlike in the rest of Australia where similar small school farms are not common. In this…

In this piece I raise a number of rural education issues that I think might be productively engaged through a sociological lens. The paper has developed from notes on 'international trends in rural education' for a pre conference workshop of AARE in December of 2014. My general conclusion is that the field of rural education, at least as it exists…

The position of small rural schools is precarious in much of rural Canada today. What is to be done about small schools in rural communities which are often experiencing population decline and aging, economic restructuring, and the loss of employment and services? We argue this issue is a classic "wicked" policy problem. Small schools…

A challenge for contemporary rural educators (especially teachers) is how to imagine rural education in a way that is not entirely focused on defining the rural as a problems space or as something simultaneously left behind by history and outmigration. Problems of community economic development come into the picture when we attempt to imagine…

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…

This analysis draws on interview data from a three-year study of educational decision making of youth living in a coastal community in Atlantic Canada. Students whose educational and mobility aspirations extend outside the known spaces of the community develop the ability to negotiate multiple social spaces in and out of school. The school- …