Reframing Rural Education Research
About
This ongoing project is working to reframe the foundations of rural education research. It does so by working to bring together theories and methodologies from the fields of rural education and rural studies. The rural education field has tended to work from within its own boundaries and, consequently, the field has grown increasingly narrow and removed from the parent disciplines. Central here is the distinction between the various sub-fields of education and their relationships with the parent disciplines. While rural education is somewhat ambiguously placed, it draws primarily from the traditions of sociology and geography, with broader engagements with the non-education fields of rural sociology and rural geography (Roberts & Cuervo, 2015). Important here is that sociology, and the sociology of education, does not engage significantly with the rural, hence the development of sub-fields of rural education and rural sociology. Consequently, scholarship is necessary in order to bridge these divides and enhance the quality and breadth of scholarship in all related fields.
Research Strands
Mapping the fields
This research engages the proposition that research related to education in rural, regional and remote communities is ambiguously situated and constructed. In response, this project examines how ‘education’ is engaged in rural sociology, how rural sociology is engaged in rural education research, and how to develop bridges between these fields.
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Ruraling educational research
Rural education is often marginalised in the discipline of education studies, despite its importance to the future of Australian society. This project aims to produce, as a field, a collective ‘statement’ on what rural education research represents, especially as it intersects with other domains of educational research.
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Valuing the rural: putting the rural first
In this project we challenge the assumed construction of the metropolitan as the centre and the rural/remote as peripheral by swapping them. In doing so, this project seeks to gain insights from the work being done around service provision that values rural places and people.
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Education in rural China
Through this work, which engages with the comparative education field, we are bringing studies of rural China to the Australian rural education field. By using an international comparative lens, this research is generating new insights into how the rural is socially constructed across international contexts.
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