In rural Canada the issue of school closures and consolidations due to low enrollment and heightened fiscal constraints has become a contentious and highly charged issue for citizens and communities. This literature review synthesizes the major effects of school closure on rural communities, identifying economic impacts, social impacts, and…

Despite known inequalities of digital access in rural Canada, we know little about the foundational digital literacies learning needs of students attending rural elementary schools. This exploratory case study, conducted in Ontario, presents 13 rural-serving Grade 4-6 teachers' insights on the access needs and digital literacies learning needs of…

This empirical study provides a rare glimpse inside one classroom setting to explore the ways one high school Civics teacher taught for pluralist citizenship in his rural community, in anticipation of looming urbanization. This study demonstrates concrete ways of teaching and learning to navigate difference and conflict in seemingly homogeneous…

This paper summarizes themes of rural teaching and rural students' experiences of initial teacher education programs based on focus group data of 25 Canadian northern rural and Indigenous teachers and early childhood educators. Inductive analyses of focus group data identified themes related to living and teaching in northern rural communities. A…

This paper reports on an interpretive study that examined the role of the teaching principal, particularly as it relates to principals' moral and legal requirement to work as instructional leaders for student learning. A teaching principal is defined as a principal who has a "double load" or dual roles in teaching and administration…

This article reports on collaborative action research in twelve northern rural and Indigenous communities in four Canadian provinces. Pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, grade one, and Aboriginal Head Start teachers worked with university researchers in three universities to create action research projects with the aim of supporting children's oral…

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 the mid-1960s, a bitter dispute broke out between parents in the Atlee-Jenner School District in Southern Alberta Canada, and the Medicine Hat School Board over the bussing of children for the first time to a new school a long distance away. The move was precipitated by the consolidation of several smaller school districts and the subsequent…

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…

Purpose: This paper draws on research which began in 2006 with students in a graduate course on rural education. Its purpose was to find out what graduate students saw as current issues of rural education, how that compared to the literature, and what they thought supporting agencies such as government and universities needed to be doing to…

Over the past two decades, distance education has become a reality of rural schooling in Newfoundland and Labrador. In this article, I provide historical background into the challenges facing rural schools in the province and how distance education was introduced to address that challenge. I also describe how that system of distance education…

The Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) is the national and international voice of Canada's colleges and institutes. Established in 1972, it is a membership-based organization, representing 150 post-secondary colleges, institutes of technology, cegeps and university-colleges, 900 campuses and over two million full- and part-time…

The introduction of inter-school electronic networks has added a new dimension to education in Canada that has many implications for students who attend schools in rural communities. Collaborative internet-based teaching and learning and the creation of virtual classes within regional intranets now complement traditional on-site instruction in…

During the 1980s in the province of Saskatchewan there have been many initiatives from government, trustee and teacher organizations, universities, and school systems to respond to dramatic changes in rural school communities. Between 1979 and 1987 rural schools experienced a decline in student enrollment of 12%. To deal with the changing profiles…

This issue of College Canada looks at the challenges confronting Canada's rural community colleges. Topics addressed in the issue include information technology and community colleges, public policy for rural community colleges, and educational partnerships. Articles include: (1) "Gather 'Round, Let's Talk... Anchoring the Community College…