Practice-Based Research: Researching Rural Education

Abstract

In 2005, I taught a distance learning course on current issues in rural education. Teachers shared stories concerning their teaching experiences that included challenges in attracting and retaining qualified teachers, operating budgets, regional consolidation, long-distance bussing, distance education, and multi-grading. From these discussions surfaced a broader set of queries that questioned the underdevelopment of ‘positive’ rural education compared with other forms of educational studies. In discussions, I detected feelings of student marginality and of their being undervalued as teachers. Words and phrases such as ‘isolation’, ‘inequality’, ‘discrimination’, and ‘teaching as problematic’ emerged. These expressions of inadequacy were not covered in the literature on rural education, a void spurring me into research which began in 2006.

This case study explores the research process in which I engaged to provide teacher voice. The focus is on the issues encountered as the instructor and students of the graduate-level course became researcher and participants in a research project, and the challenges involved in documenting teachers' discourse of practice as research. These discussions lead to a more general consideration of the origin and purpose of research.

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