The purpose of the symposium is to investigate features of teaching in both rural kindergartens and schools, as well as to gain deeper understanding of rural research concepts. Scholars will report from a comparative research project (Lithuania, Norway, Poland).

Rural communities present special challenges to teachers, including large territorial distances, isolation from colleagues/professional environment, and limited access to resources for support, as well as unique community expectations and role conflicts teachers in the social dynamics of rural neighborhoods.

Several characteristics in teacher’s rural work differ from urban schooling on the first sight. There is a smaller number of teachers at school in rural areas. It is much more difficult for small rural schools to attract and retain qualified staff. In a village school, it is often, that a teacher covers a larger number of subjects than he/she was trained for (Berg – Olsen 2008: 114). There are mixed-aged classes, what makes facilitation of individual student’s learning more challenging. Seen from a curriculum perspective rural schools tend to be smaller, pupils enjoy more individual attention from their teachers, and teachers have often quite intense relations to their pupils. There is also evidence that small rural schools are effective in helping pupils to learn and to participate in civic life (Howley 2002, Nielsen et.al.2005).

Much of current teaching practice seem to be based on models derived from urban knowledge and competence context (Buras 2012)s, which have little in common with the demands of rural areas. Research in this field is extremely important since rural teacher work force counts for ca. 30 % of the entire teacher work force. International research beside some Canadian research on teacher professionalism (Preston 2006) seems to be neutral, in terms of distinction between urbanity and rurality and it does not consider rural ways of being a teacher. This is surprising, because pedagogy of place (Mendel 2006, 2009) as well as, place-based education (Sobel 2004) comes with a clear argument that place matters. Only very limited research literature focusing on European countries is available that documents or analyses the unique approaches and challenges of rural teaching.

Aim of the symposium is to reconstruct unique qualities of educational work at schools and kindergartens situated in rural, sparsely populated areas, and thereby to reconstruct unique contributions to rural-community capability building, that can be introduced to teacher education.

The symposium brings together scholars presenting both, conceptual and empirical research. The empirical research is focused on both teachers in kindergarten and school.

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