Over the past two decades, interest and support for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has prompted many teacher education programs in the United States to incorporate it into preservice curricula. Developed by CAST, an educational nonprofit, the UDL framework aims to support the design of inclusive educational environments by minimizing barriers…

In September of 2020, seven school divisions in Western Manitoba developed a remote learning program to support medically fragile families whose children could not return to classrooms. The coalition of these school divisions, known as the Westman Consortia Partnership (WCP), needed to investigate what beliefs, practices, and strategies were…

In 2017, SPERA [Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia] members and supporters were surveyed on their views of rural education. Forty-two participants responded to the online survey through targeted and snowball recruitment. Participants shared their opinions of the main issues in rural education, the challenges facing rural…

In this paper, we suggest strength-based approaches for the creation of sustainable rural learning ecologies. We have framed the creation of rural learning ecologies with appreciative inquiry (AI) as a framework and argue that it begins from understanding rurality from positive psychology. The premise within AI has been seen to be the shift from…

In this paper, I address the issues of rural disadvantage in accessing higher education. Taking an autoethnographic approach and building on research on rural education, which has shown that geography is an important stratifier of educational outcomes, I reflect on the factors that helped me to access higher education despite my rural background…

In spite of being relatively wealthy and resource-rich, a persistent narrative of the island state of Tasmania is the deficit framing of its regional and rural education where, under the placeless and mobile orientation of hypermodernity, the only serious option for success for its young is to leave their communities. This paper presents a…

Inclusive education remains a challenge for Australian tertiary education, particularly specialized pedagogical approaches like work-integrated learning (WIL) and service learning. Critiques of mainstream pedagogical approaches raise questions about the predominant models of educating students (Butin, 2010; Howard, 1998). There is a definitive…

This article reviews current developments in state and national policies that affect rural special education. A brief overview of the federal role in rural education is provided, with emphasis on the implications for the provision of special education services in rural communities. A variety of challenges are identified, including (a) the variable…

This report, the first in the series, points out that, while urban families increasingly have access to a variety of school options--including charter schools--many rural families have just a single school option. There are numerous examples of rural charter schools that have done great things for students while also benefiting the larger…

China has made remarkable progress along the path of economic transformation over the past three decades. To continue its rapid growth in an economy with increasingly higher wages, China's key challenge is whether it can become competitive enough in quasi-skilled and skilled sectors so that more technologically advanced industries and service…

What does the literature say about effective transition between the high school and post-secondary education? A disturbing number of students leave college without completing their degree or earning the credential they sought. This problem, which is especially acute for poor, minority and rural students, results in a colossal waste of talent,…

This report is the result of an investigation of the schools of Beaufort County, North Carolina, at the request of the county board of education, for the purpose of studying the possibilities for centralizing the schools of the county and of recommending a definite plan of procedure for school consolidation. No complete investigation of the…