This paper explores the question of how rural schools can achieve justice within metro-normative knowledge systems?’. Two central perspectives of this paper are rural knowledges and metro-normativity, which are used to argue for a form of spatial justice that incorporates epistemic justice. The paper draws upon, and integrates, the fields of rural studies, curriculum inquiry and rural education. Work by on spatial justice and metro-normativity (Roberts & Green, 2013) have been emerging notions in European research, particularly in the European context Bæck (2016) in relation to spatial inequities in achievement, and Beach et al (2019) on metro-normativity and Öhrn & Beach (2019) on rural schooling 

Drawing upon curriculum inquiry the paper explores the idea of ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘knowledge of the powerful’ (Young & Muller, 2016) from the perspective of the global rural. As such, the paper argues that what counts as ‘powerful knowledge’ is characteristically western-scientific knowledge of the global metropole. This Northern Knowledge (Connell, 2007), does not engage with the knowledge of the ‘south’ (de Sousa Santos, 2014), characterised here as ‘rural knowledges’. 

Problematically, much research and practice into overcoming the ‘rural problem’ of on average poorer academic achievement assumes a deficit discourse and consequently seeks to redress rural ‘under-achievement’ through approaches to enhance achievement within the existing curriculum and post-education pathways. In these dominant approaches the nature of knowledge is naturalised so that achievement in assessment systems can be enhanced. Within this context the nuances of knowledges of, and from, the rural are marginalised in favour of that codified in the curriculum and existing curriculum enactment (as evidenced in texts, curriculum resources and assessment tools).

The resultant challenge is to build knowledge in curriculum enactment that engages with, and from, a rural perspective. Starting from the position that there are a multiplicity of meanings of the rural (Roberts & Green, 2013), and that the resultant multiple ways of representing the rural tend to draw upon divergent epistemological traditions (Woods, 2011) we can approach the ‘problem of knowledge’ (Young & Muller, 2016) from a rural perspective. 

In this paper the rural is constructed as constituting multiple layers that are socially produced as beyond the global metropole. Thus, the notion of what constitutes the rural, and the role of rural schools in communities, is an important consideration. Using the example of rural schooling and curriculum in Australia, I illustrate that access to, and achievement in, the curriculum has been perennially unequal. Rather than the reflexive response of positioning this as disadvantage, I argue that the disadvantage is produced by the curriculum and the knowledge it represents and values. Drawing upon Teese (2013) and Bleazby (2015), I suggest that knowledge as represented in the curriculum, in Australia at least, can be seen as stratified into high status and low status. Higher-status subjects are characterised by a long history, greater literacy demands, abstract ideas, rich theoretical content, relationships, patterns and logic, and a focus on personal distinction. The more abstract, theoretical, cognitive, objective, universal and certain a subject’s content appears, the higher is its status. Whereas lower-status subjects have a more recent history, lesser literacy demands, applied ideas, less theoretical ideas, less relationships, patters and logic, focus on relevance. I suggest that much of what has been positioned as ‘lower status’ relates to knowledges of the rural. Here I gesture towards knowledges grounded in an understanding of place, as opposed to meanings rooted in a more metropolitan-cosmopolitan worldview (Downes & Roberts, 2015). This form of knowledge is inevitably situated and emanates from a situated, perhaps rural, standpoint.

This paper combines findings from two related projects in an evolving theoretical framework pertaining to spatial justice - an emerging concept in European rural studies. The first project drawn from research related to aspirations for STEM careers in rural communities (Roberts, 2018). This project involved a national survey of students, teachers, parents and community members of their understandings of the link between school subjects and rural industry STEM careers. This was followed by interviews and focus groups around the nation with industry groups to explore these issues in greater detail, as well as multiple focus groups with students and teachers in rural schools. The second project draws upon research related to access and achievement in the senior secondary curriculum, and related findings of curriculum hierarchies (Roberts et al, 2019). This research drew upon data (n = 73 371) for all students in the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW) who qualified for the NSW end of secondary school qualification, the Higher School Certificate (HSC) at the end of the 2017 school year. Multiple variables were within the data, including school location. A student socio-economic status variable was developed to examine characteristics of subject access and achievement. This drew upon the AUSSIE06 (McMillan et al., 2009) occupation scales, using the parental occupation and education information for individual students. This was then combined with student subject enrolment, and achievement in aggregate form at the subject level. While examples from Australia are used in this paper, the issues of rurality, knowledge and spatial justice are global in significance, with theories drawn in from the related international fields of rural studies, curriculum inquiry and rural education. The paper builds upon on research presented at ECER in 2016 on rural schools as the socio-economic hubs of communities. It also contributes to the advancement of spatial justice theory, with particular reference to aspects of epistemic justice. The research reported here also foreshadows a three-year Australian Research Council project on ‘engaging rural knowledges for spatial justice’ that builds on the approaches described here, with additional community and school case study research. The theories advanced in this paper form the basis of this new research project.

With reference to the empirical research the paper draws upon, this research illustrates that rural students don’t study ‘powerful’ subjects at the same rate as metropolitan students, often because they don’t see the knowledge within those subjects as meaningful to their work and lives in rural places. That is, rural knowledges are not visible to students in these subjects and that drives unequal outcomes in secondary schooling. To illustrate this argument, I draw upon two recent empirical studies. The first (Roberts 2018) illustrated the different engagements, and understandings, of subjects related to rural students intended post-secondary pathways. Specifically, students intending to move to university saw STEM subjects as valuable whereas students intending to remain local post-school saw these as not important to their futures. In the second study (Roberts et al, 2019) we found that the NSW curriculum is organised into a hierarchy. This hierarchy operates in two related dimensions: the mean socio-economic status (SES) of students studying each subject, and the value that each subject carries towards a student’s university entry score. We found that there is a collection of subjects that are predominantly studied by students of higher average SES, and that also have greater value to students’ final scores. We also found that access to subjects in the hierarchy is patterned by the location of the school the student attends, and that this imbalance increases with distance. In terms of theory, this work advances notions of rural knowledges and metro-normative knowledge systems. In so doing it advances a theory of spatial justice and its epistemic justice dimension. The paper also continues the authors work to connect the historically separate fields of rural studies, curriculum inquiry and rural education.

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