ECER Roundtable proposal:

Investigating rural youth, education identities and place: ethnographic methodologies for investigating education in rural communities

Chair: Dennis Beach, University of Gothenburg

Organisers: Carl Bagley, Durham University and Elisabet Öhrn, University of Gothenburg

Using input from European research this roundtable takes its starting point in and sets out to create deepened discussions about the need and value of addressing the education and social situation and interactions of young people in rural contexts. This is important. It is often assumed that rural youth experience less severe problems with various kinds of social and economic deprivation and exclusion than do urban youth. However, recent research from both Eastern and Northern Europe shows that young people from outside metropolitan regions more often express a lack of involvement in society and a lack of confidence in governments and political institutions than anticipated. The roundtable will therefore aim to develop an understanding of European rural youth and their relationship to education and society by focusing especially on these communities. It will include researchers whose work has addressed rural primary and secondary schools. The values of different methodological and theoretical approaches will be discussed and the contribution of ethnography to investigating rural social and educational involvement and identities will be looked at particularly and in relation to four presentations.

1: Late Modernity and Schooling: Rural Perspectives

Prof Carl Bagley, University of Durham, Assoc Prof Martin Forsey, University of Western Australia

2: Rural youth. Education, place and participation

Elisabeth Öhrn, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Monica Johansson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Per-Åke Rosvall, University of Borås, Sweden, Maria Rönnlund, Umeå University, Sweden

3: One school for all? Constructing cultural spaces in educational discourse and practice in the context of Nordic national minorities

 Tuuli From, University of Helsinki

4: Creative Teaching and Learning Practices for All in Small Rural Schools in Spain: Participation of families.

Begoña Vigo Arrazola and Juana Soriano Bozalongo, University of Zaragoza

Presentation 1 is based on

articles that comprise a forthcoming special issue in the international research journal Education and Ethnography edited by the two presenters. These articles each apply and engage an ethnographic understanding of the lived experiences of individuals associated with education in rural spaces. They ask questions about the different social realities that may be produced in places at some remove from metropolitan centres and draw out methodological, ethical and epistemological issues related to researching rural space that allow us to ask searching questions about contemporary social realities. These include the floowing 4 questions.

1. The role and purpose of rural schooling in early 21^st Century societies
2. Community formation in rural settings and the centrality of schools
3. Issues of physical, social and intellectual mobility and the role of rural schools
4. Student/parent/ teacher experiences and agency

These questions are also addressed in the other presentations. They have helped shape our thinking in connection to recently established research projects that aim to analyse the shifting geometry of social power relations and the particular mix of social relations that define the uniqueness of rural places and shape education experiences, practices and identities there. The methodological potential of ethnography in combination with theories of (rural) space developed in the work of Doreen Massey will be given particular attention.

Issue 9:3 of the journal Ethnography and Education: Dec 2014. Aberg-Bengtsson, L. (2009). The smaller the better? A review of research on small rural schools in Sweden. International Journal of Educational Research, 48(2), 100-108. Allen, J., Massey, D.B, Cochrane, A. (1998) Rethinking the region. New York: Routledge. Domingo, A. (2013). Inclusive practices in the rural school. Conclusions of a doctoral thesis. In EERA Annual Conference 2013, September. 10-13. Bahçeehir University, Istanbul. Hargreaves, L. (2009). Respect and responsabilty: Review of research on rural schools in England. International Journal of Educational Research, 48(2), 117-128. Massey, D.B. (1994) Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, D.B. (1995) Spatial divisions of labor: Social structures and the geography of production 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Massey, D.B (2005) For Space, London: Sage (ISBN 1412903610 & 1412903629) Mills, C., & Gale, T. (2004). Parent participation in disadvantaged schools: Moving beyond attributions of blame. Aunstralian Journal of Education 48(3), 268-281. O'donoghue, T. A.; Chalmers, R. (2000). How Teachers Manage Their Work In Inclusive Classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education 16, 8, 889-904. Raggl, A. (2013). Creative Teaching and Learning Practices in Mixed-Age Classes in Small Rural Primary Schools in Austria. In EERA Annual Conference 2013, Vigo, B., Abós, P. Bernal, J. L. Bueno, C. Julve, C., Ramo, R. and Soriano, J. (2008). Memoria de investigación. La atención a la diversidad en los núcleos rurales dispersos de la Comunidad Autónoma de Aragón. Centro de Estudios sobre la Despoblación y Desarrollo de Áreas Rurales (CEDDAR) 2006. Memoria de investigación.