Professionals, families, and individuals with disabilities must work together to advocate for policy and legislation that will improve the lives of those with disabilities. Rural areas have unique issues that make targeted advocacy efforts necessary. While families and parents have a personal interest in advocacy, professionals have ethical…

In this article we present and discuss experiences developed through a dialogue conference which we organised as part of a three-year participatory action research project related to primary education and agricultural education in Tanzania. We explore how dialogue conference as a research method can fill a gap between traditional ways of mutual…

This article summarizes various applications of oral history interviews at local sites to represent the writing of underrepresented groups. The coauthors (a rhetorician and an archivist) discuss the important disciplinary implications for tending to the local, especially at sites where formal archives are hard to come by, offering three principles…

The Boone Hope Foundation has given away over $130,000 in gift cards, rent checks, and eyeglasses--all targeted to help students with emergency needs related to food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare in its rural Iowa community. This is the story of teachers from a typical Midwestern school--relatively small and certainly not affluent--who have…

In American popular culture, the word "rural" invokes images of sunny farms and little red school-houses--while "urban" means drugs, poverty, and crime. But rural schools face many of the same challenges as their urban counterparts. The problems of rural schools are often invisible to the public and policy makers. The solutions…

The town of Danville in Ohio was well known for its many turkey farms. Today there's barely a gobble to be heard around Danville, and the only talk of turkeys is at the annual Danville Turkey Festival, which has for decades celebrated the area's agricultural heritage. The local processing plant moved 200 miles north, into Michigan, in keeping with…

Establishing rapport between researcher and participants when conducting ethnography is essential to the successful outcome of the research. However, when participants are unwilling to engage, a different approach must be adopted. This article is an examination of the appropriation of a situated learning model during fieldwork with a group of…

This paper is about how rural landscape is experienced according to combinations of practical engagements with land and the ways meaning is made in relation to it. It presents the case of the ambiguous position of the Orkney Islands within categorisations of Highland and Lowland landscapes in Scotland. Through a discussion of the physical and…

Poverty and unemployment aren't spread evenly across cities or regions, but rather are concentrated in disinvested urban neighborhoods and rural communities around the country. These communities are home to the nation's most vulnerable children and families. Despite some signs of improvement in economic conditions for families in the United…

Describes efforts to enlist community support for a bond referendum to build two new elementary schools in Lunenburg County, Virginia. Recommends (1) establishing a grassroots organization; (2) emphasizing moral issues; (3) stressing needs of the school system; (4) orienting the campaign toward the future; (5) starting the campaign early; and (6)…

This article presents a preliminary analysis of a rural junior high school. This school is situated in S town, J county, Shandong province, and, in keeping with the procedure followed for naming the majority of schools in China by location of school + type of school, this school is called S Junior High. J county is one of Shandong's poor counties,…

Discusses the problems and impact of national trends on small towns and how small towns in eastern Washington have adapted to social and economic change. Illustrates how small towns try to address contemporary concerns such as computerization, the environment, and the expanding needs of their communities while continuing to hold on to their…

The Brushy Fork Institute at Berea College, Kentucky, helps develop the leadership skills that rural Appalachian communities need to solve local problems and spur economic development. Community members from 42 rural counties in 4 states (plus 2 student groups at Berea College) have attended weekend workshops at Berea College and returned home to…

Through school-based programs and community interviews, the Northern Forest Center has documented the history of place names in rural eastern Maine. The resulting book aims to move residents beyond local forestry-related conflicts by focusing on shared values, to preserve local sense of place, and to make children want to stay in or return to the…

Focusing on law enforcement agents and taxpayers at the local level, this two-part report examines facts about crime in the United States and reports results of a survey conducted to determine attitudes about crime and police protection. Part One presents facts and issues related to types of crime, crime statistics, the extent of crime, trends in…