This article highlights various paradoxes and false dichotomies in rural education research. Using Paulo Freire's theories of oppression and critical awareness, the article delineates a theoretical framework designed to explore a reframing of rural education. We propose that this reframing would serve as rural praxis for school leaders and…

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…

This article uses a queer lens in an intersectional analysis of students' schooling experiences in rural China. I argue that a queer perspective has been largely neglected and issues related to sexuality have not been carefully investigated in Chinese educational contexts. Drawing on queer theory and an intersectional framework, I re-interpret one…

Despite the significant proportions of rural Americans, schools, and public school students situated in the geographic peripheries of an increasingly urbanizing country, rural education in the United States has consistently occupied both scholarly and policy peripheries. This is to the detriment of rural America, especially to the extent that…

Based on an ethnographic study in a rural middle school in Northwest China, the author explores how the transition of the rural countryside, specifically townization, has challenged the urban-rural dichotomy being reproduced in and by formal schooling. Rural students express criticism of the chaos, pollution, and corruption they have experienced…

This study analyzes videotaped interviews and 407 photographs taken by 20 grade 5 and 6 students in rural New York State to document their science and engineering learning. Aristotle's concept of phronesis or practical wisdom frames the findings and their implications. Key findings indicate that: (1) All 20 children found examples of science and…

This study examines high school expectancies in a sample of at-risk, rural youth, and how these expectancies relate to 8th grade functioning, 9th grade functioning, and 9th grade experiences of high school. A total of 76 eighth-graders and their parents, drawn from a larger study of the transition to high school, participated in interviews the…

This paper offers the author's personal reflections about an event at a research pre-session of the 2003 annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) held on April 2003 in San Antonio, Texas. The session offered a rare opportunity for the mathematics education community to consider rural issues. In this paper, the…

An exploratory analysis of the meanings families attach to schooling, this article is based upon interviews conducted with three white, middle-class families--one from rural West Virginia, another from a small West Virginia city, and a third from rural Pennsylvania. I hoped that this preliminary effort would help me think about how families view…

Despite the current attention directed at rural education, rural minority youth may be in some danger of becoming invisible. A lack of specific and detailed knowledge of minority conditions and potential opportunities at regional, sub-regional, state, and local levels has inhibited the development of sound programs and policies for the redress of…

Performance of rural 13-year-olds on the 1971-1972 social studies assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were reviewed in terms of three major exercise themes. Performance on skill exercises revealed rural strengths in source selection and human affairs insights, but weaknesses in reading maps and graphs. Fewer than…

Structural and cultural inequalities hinder the attainment of approximately 25 million rural American youth. A characteristic lack of education and employment opportunities is combined with a restricted realm of attainment in rural areas. Rural people are negatively stereotyped by the mass society, as seen in an examination of linguistic terms…

Estimates impact of community resource development (CRD) programs on a variety of quality of life indicators for 73 Arkansas counties that were nonmetropolitan in 1960. Results indicate that few quality of life indicators were affected in the direction intended by CRD programs. Examines substantive and methodological implications of the findings.…

This report draws on research, statistics, and the voices of rural young people to document the extent and causes of rural child poverty, and related problems and reasons for hope in specific focus areas. About 2.5 million rural children are chronically poor. Rural poverty is concentrated in central Appalachia, the deep South, the U.S.-Mexican…