This article presents a rich account of school leadership development within the North Coast Initiative for School Improvement program in New South Wales, Australia. The focus is the school leader at a small rural school, whose engagement with generative dialogue and collaborative inquiry results in a growing confidence in engaging her school…

McCreary School, a rural community school with an average enrolment of 150 students from kindergarten to grade 12, provides a learning environment for a population of diverse students in Turtle River School Division, Manitoba. At the same time, the school incurs significant challenges for creating a school and classroom environment that is…

Based on Indigenous education research in Canada, the U.S., and Peru, small Indigenous school founders and educators reveal visions and tensions emerging through commitment to community-based Indigenous schooling. Major themes encompass connections to histories, relationships with the environment, and navigation of local and state pressures.…

This case examines a rural teaching principal in a small K-12 school in a prairie province. The case examines the work intensification of Mrs. Hayes, whose school has been affected by reductions in student enrolment, staffing, and administrative time. Overwhelmed by myriad responsibilities, the principal feels inadequate as both a teacher and a…

This paper reports on the ways in which teaching principals in rural schools in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, Canada enact instructional leadership within the five leadership domains conceptualized by Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe (2008). Although participants suggested that they were "not where they wanted to be" in their efforts to…

Bimodal-bilingual programs are emerging as one way to meet broader needs and provide expanded language, educational and social-emotional opportunities for students who are deaf and hard of hearing (Marschark, M., Tang, G. & Knoors, H. (Eds). (2014). "Bilingualism and Bilingual Deaf Education." New York, NY: Oxford University Press;…

K-12 online distance education is growing rapidly and many organizations focus on virtual schooling in Canada. The centre for Distance Learning and Innovation (CDLI) was established in 2000 in Newfoundland and Labrador and has been offering numerous opportunities to rural high school students through online distance education. In this paper, the…

Small schools and their communities contribute to an important, though threatened, knowledge base. The threat adheres in underlying technologies (conceptual and material) that propel the capitalistic world towards the rationalization of all aspects of human activity. In education, this appears in the consolidation of small schools and ever larger…

In many school districts, rural life in British Columbia continues to be a geographic and economic fact. Delivering equal school services and ensuring equal educational opportunities to areas with thinly scattered populations continues to be a challenge for the provincial government and school districts. Rural schools offer many positive benefits…

Background: The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of interactive technology in the form of mathematical applications (apps) delivered using iPads on kindergarten children's learning of number sense in a play-based learning environment. Secondly, factors influencing the use of interactive technology in a play-based environment were…

This paper presents the results of interviews with 12 Manitoba and Alberta rural teaching principals regarding their leadership practices in small schools. The overwhelming theme mentioned by these teaching principals was the joy and sense of purpose they found in the relationships they cultivated with children, staff, and community members…

This paper examines a model of decision-making within the context of current and emerging regimes of accountability being proposed and implemented for school systems in a number of jurisdictions. These approaches to accountability typically involve the use of various measurable student learning outcomes as well as other measures of performance to…

The position of small rural schools is precarious in much of rural Canada today. What is to be done about small schools in rural communities which are often experiencing population decline and aging, economic restructuring, and the loss of employment and services? We argue this issue is a classic "wicked" policy problem. Small schools…

This paper investigates the presence (or absence) of Ely's (1999) conditions for implementing innovation in a rural context in the province of Quebec (Canada). The innovation, namely the Remote Networked School (RNS) initiative, is designed to bring new technology tools to enrich the learning environment of students and diminish teachers'…

Large-scale assessment results for schools, school boards/districts, and entire provinces or states are commonly reported as the percentage of students achieving a standard--that is, the percentage of students scoring above the cut score that defines the standard on the assessment scale. Recent research has shown that this method of reporting is…