The teaching of mathematics, which arguably is so abstract as to transcend place and community and even culture (according at least to a Platonic view of mathematics), will seem to some observers particularly ill-suited to instruction in place- or community- or culture-based approaches. Nevertheless, current thinking in mathematics education,…

Attracting and retaining effective education leaders and teaching staff for regional, rural and remote schools in Australia is a major sustainability and quality issue facing every State and Territory. It is also a major concern in pre-service teacher education, particularly for those universities which have a commitment to rural and regional…

Australia and Canada are large countries with small populations relative to their size, in which a not inconsiderable number of citizens live beyond major centres of population. In both resource-based economies, the provision of quality education in rural schools is an important part of the national social and economic infrastructure. This article…

Educational leadership has been the focus of many studies; however, leadership does not occur in a vacuum. Understanding the context in which it occurs will in turn help to explain the phenomenon itself. Rural communities in the United States have many differences when compared to urban and suburban areas. Twenty-eight percent of schools in the…

The Central Region states have greater percentages of rural students and schools than the U.S. average. This report describes how nine teacher preparation programs in the region prepare their graduates for teaching positions in rural settings. The study found that, of 120 institutions in the Central Region that offer teacher preparation, only 17…

Indigenous students in rural Alaska hold high educational aspirations and yet few students realize their educational goals (Hamilton & Seyfrit, 1993; Kleinfeld & McDiarmid, 1986; McDiarmid & Kleinfeld, 1981). Our purpose in this study was to understand why so many Alaska Native students from small, isolated communities…

Rural school districts struggle to attract, retain, and support highly qualified mathematics teachers. A series of four online professional development courses in the form of integrated mathematics content and pedagogy courses was designed to meet the professional development needs of rural middle school mathematics teachers. Changes in teachers'…

New York rural schools and districts have a high percentage of core teaching assignments filled by highly qualified teachers, with only small differences across key factors such as school poverty and school need for improvement. Urban schools--particularly those in New York City--have fewer core assignments filled by highly qualified teachers.…

The application of ICT in education in rural and remote contexts is rapidly evolving and is actively being pursued as a solution to educational issues. ICT in education involves technological as well as pedagogical and social dimensions. This paper examines approaches being taken in developing ICT usage in Northern Territory schools for teaching…

This essay considers the intellectual engagement of rural people in the context of their schooling. It argues that rural schooling shares the miseducative purposes common to American schooling in general (i.e., purposes associated with sustaining American global economic dominion). It frames rurally appropriate education as an on-the-ground…

The Distance Education Project for Rural Schools (DEPRS) was implemented by the Chinese government between 2003 and 2007 to improve the quality of basic education in rural areas of China, especially in the poorer western provinces. It has been referred to as "the largest ICT project in the world up to now" because "it serves a…

Here's a challenge. Try searching "Google" for the phrase "rural science teachers" in Australian web content. Surprisingly, my attempts returned only two hits, neither of which actually referred to Australian teachers. Searches for "rural science education" fare little better. On this evidence one could be forgiven…

This paper reports some findings from a longitudinal study of a group of volunteers at an independent school in China. Founded by a committed group of volunteers, Springfield School has been self-sustaining and has provided junior high school education for the past eight years. The author describes the demographic and education background of the…

This article explores a range of partnership approaches used in a PGCE programme in order to challenge a deficiency framework many teachers have regarding rural contexts and to develop a more positive orientation to the possibility of working in such contexts. This constitutes a response to the national imperative to educate teachers for rural…

This paper reviews research on small rural primary schools in Finland and analyses it under three thematic foci: the relationship between the local rural school and the surrounding community, the small rural primary school as a learning environment, and the teachers' profession in this context. Over 30% of Finnish primary schools are small rural…