Most educational movements have been in the direction of national standards, have been urban oriented, and often have failed to recognize or acknowledge the uniqueness of rural education. Consequently, rural education has become little more than a second thought as teachers' skills are developed. This paper examines the contribution colleges of education can make to school restructuring by including the unique needs of rural education as a legitimate entity in curricula and pedagogical approaches. Pace and Potterfield (1992) have identified characteristics of rural students in the southeastern section of the United States and have found that: rural learners are likely to be global learners, to have a strong preference for cooperating with others, to see learning as a social experience, to have an aversion to individual recognition, to have difficulty with arbitrarily set time frames, to prefer oral transmission of information in a social setting, to exhibit a tendency toward subjective conclusions, and to have a sense of powerlessness concerning events and the environment. Certain modifications, commensurate with learning styles of rural students, have been made in teacher education coursework offered at the undergraduate, graduate, and inservice levels, that are matched on a one-to-one correspondence with these rural students. It is suggested that these modifications can be made in any undergraduate or graduate course since the emphasis is on classroom climate, social cooperative skills, and teaching strategies. (LL)