Gives 1986 National Rural and Small Schools Consortium Conference definitions for rural school district, small school district, and remote/isolated school, providing common terms for communicating with legislators, federal/state policymakers, and researchers. Emphasizes "ruralness" as a continuum affected by the interaction of…

Rural schools, which comprise 67% of the nation's school systems, experience distinct educational environments and have unique strengths and weaknesses. Quality research to assess the effectiveness of rural education has been hampered by inconsistently applied definitions of "rural" and inadequate data to compare rural and urban…

This paper describes cooperative endeavors involving a team of researchers and the staff of two rural school districts. In early 1990, the researchers asked teachers and administrators in an economically distressed rural Tennessee district (pseudonym Iris) to participate in a study determining school, community, and family characteristics related…

Oral history plays a vital role in accurate preservation of the rural school experience and the actual restoration of some of the country's 212,000 one-room school buildings. Oral histories provide valuable, first-hand information on who taught in and who attended one-room schools, what the curriculum included, what the building looked like, and…

To develop a list of research priorities for rural education, members of the Rural Education Association's (REA) Research Committee and Executive Board were asked to rank order nine thematic research categories. The ranking process resulted in the following list (starting with the highest priority): (1) rural school effectiveness; (2) staff…

This paper offers criticism of rural education research methods, and identifies areas in need of more or better systematic inquiry. It suggests the need to increase the quantity of the highest quality of research and the need for researchers to reach policy makers and "mainstream" education journals more effectively. Five main problems…

Sums up the current status of rural education research, offers explanations for the present situation, and argues for two essential steps in developing a rural research and development agenda: adoption of overarching research paradigms to guide future inquiry and consensus concerning the substantive issues to be studied. (JHZ)

The educational potential of agriculture stems from the diversity and tangibility of its components. As a science based human activity, it may provide the educator with a unique combination of educational opportunities in a context which is authentic and accessible to the pupil and to the teacher. (JHZ)

Rural education may be the beneficiary of the current national focus on educational reform since concerns have centered on improving education for all students regardless of where they live, a direction not emphasized in most previous reform movements. The reforms bring challenges relating to teacher certification, curriculum, facilities, student…

Many problems are encountered by school districts regardless of size. State and federal involvement in education provides certain financial resources, but also makes demands for accountability. This creates conflicts between local program development and the requirements of state and federal regulations, and particularly complicates the…

Information available on rural education remains startlingly inadequate--partly because of the great diversity of rural areas, because agencies responsible for data collection disagree on the definition of small/rural schools, and because large metropolitan schools have received far more than their share of attention, research, and financial…

This book, consisting of a series of discussion papers and case studies, is a compilation of the papers presented at a region 1 workshop on participatory research in Africa. Included in the volume are the following discussion papers: "The Concept of Development in the Social Sciences," by Kemal Mustafa and Deborah Bryceson; "The…

Although rural education is entering an era of opportunity in terms of both youth and adult needs, the capacity of rural areas to provide needed educational services may be diminished due to rapid economic and social change, particularly in agriculture. Three federal policies operating over the past two decades have created an unfavorable…

In many states renewed attempts at school reorganization may be the sole policy response to solving the rural school improvement issue. Reorganization should be resisted because benefits of reorganization are mixed, good rural schools have many strengths, and the demise of rural schools will damage the infrastructure of rural America. (JHZ)