Examines the university's role in professionalizing rural teachers, contending that lack of a substantive definition of education's public purpose creates teachers who are unprepared to contribute meaningfully to the intellectual life of their communities. Teacher preparation programs should abandon the instrumental focus and confront unique…

This ERIC digest summarizes recent studies on poverty in rural areas. In 1986, the poverty rate in rural areas was 50 percent higher than the urban rate. During the 1980s, rural poverty stayed higher, rising more rapidly during recession, and falling more slowly in the "recovery" period. Characteristics that distinguish the rural poor…

This speech is about respect for small things and suggests that schooling could benefit from the care and attention enabled by a smaller scale. Among the points made are that, yes, all children can learn, but that is no big deal. Schooling should contribute to their education, but schooling is far from being identical with education. Learning…

This paper discusses "constructions" of school size in West Virginia and Ohio and related issues concerned with school and school district consolidation, and the role of education, politics, and globalization. "School size" is not the same as enrollment; grade span and level are important in understandings of size.…

This digest reviews the concepts of "culture" and "multicultural education" and advocates multicultural education for rural schools. Culture applies to any group with coherent norms and traditions that help members engage the world around them. Multicultural education seeks to create an environment in which students can…

A prolegomenon--a "critical discussion to introduce and interpret an extended work"--exactly describes the purpose of this essay, since the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM) is very much an extended work. This essay develops a tentative theoretical framework to help represent…

The challenge of "ruralizing" teacher preparation programs is to teach teachers to think with sufficient critical intent to violate professional norms that have been unhealthy for rural schools and communities. Universities are institutions with cosmopolitan rather than local purposes. Over the centuries, the mission of higher education…

This study compares the attitudes of academically gifted rural students with those of their classmates with regard to their communities and their aspirations for a sense of place. Although West Virginia, a largely rural state in Appalachia, is considered by outsiders as a place of deprivation, despair, and backwardness, an aspiration for a sense…

This paper explores changes needed in the focus and commitment of educational research to better reflect issues relevant to rural schools and their communities. Historically, educational researchers have focused on national or cosmopolitan concerns in efforts to develop widely applicable procedures for school improvement. However, improving rural…