Dynamics of Social Class, Race, and Place in Rural Education

Publisher Marketing: Half the world's population lives in rural places, but education scholars and policy makers worldwide give little attention to rural of education. Indeed, most national systems, including in the developed world, treat their educational systems as institutions to"modernize" the global economy. The authors in this volume have different concerns. They are rural education scholars from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Kyrgyzstan, and here their focus is the dynamics of social class: in particular rural schools but also in rural schooling as a local manifestation of a national (and the global) system. For the most part, the volume comprises relevant empirical reports, but none neglects theory, and some privilege theory and interpretation. First and last chapters introduce the texts and synthesize their joint and separate meanings. What are the implications of place for social class? How do class dynamics manifest differently in more and less racially homogeneous rural communities? How does place affect class and how might class affect place? How doesschooling in rural communities reproduce or interrupt social-class mobility across generations? The chapters engage such questions more completely than other volumes in rural education, not as afinal word or interm summary, but as an opening to an important lineof inquiry thus far largely neglected in rural education scholarship. Contributor Bio:  Howley, Aimee Craig B. Howley has researched rural education and published widely in that field. He has taught mathematics at the University of Charleston and has evaluated mathematics professional development projects in rural schools. He is coauthor of "Small High Schools That Flourish" (AEL, 2000) and "Out of Our Minds: Anti-intellectualism in American Schooling" (TC Press, 1995). Howley co-directs research efforts of the NSF-funded "Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics" (ACCLAIM) and is an adjunct professor in the Educational Studies Department at Ohio University. His work for ACCLAIM entails cultivation of research capacity in rural mathematics education. Previously, he directed the ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. His empirical work is mostly quantitative; it investigates the mediating influence of school and district size on academic achievement. Other studies have examined construction costs of smaller schools, rural school busing, and rural principals' perspectives on planning. Aimee Howley is professor and coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Ohio University. She received a B. A. degree in Philosophy from Barnard College, an M. A. degree in Special Education from the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies, and an Ed. D. in Educational Administration from West Virginia University. Prior to her work in higher education institutions, Dr. Howley worked as a teacher and administrator in West Virginia. For the last several years Dr. Howley has worked on research that explores the intersection between social context and educational practice, and she has used both quantitative and qualitative methods toinvestigate a wide range of questions relating to rural education, school leadership, instructional improvement, school size, education of the gifted, and parent involvement. In addition, she has written numerous critical analyses of educational policies and practices focusing on topics such as the intellectual aims of schooling, the sense in which rurality constitutes a social context, and the relationship between educational theory and practice.