In relation to the conference theme, the research featured in the paper is situated within the religiously diverse and educationally divided schooling system in Northern Ireland. As such, it speaks directly to the conference theme and the need to understand the diversity, complexity and impact of context as it relates to small rural primary school leadership.

According to Eurostat (2020), in total, just over a quarter (28%) of the population across 28

European countries live in what can be designated a rural area. These areas, however, vary markedly in socio-economic, geographical and educational terms. For example, while rural areas close to urban centres are likely to be economically dynamic, remote and sparsely populated areas present weaker economic growth and experience population decline and reduction in services, including education. It is precisely these areas that are served by small rural primary schools, largely defined by the number  of pupils enrolled, ranging from under 70 to under 140 for primary schools (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2022).  Throughout Europe, the principals of these small rural schools appear to face similar challenges (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2022), most seriously living under constant threat of closure or amalgamation, due to a combination of factors. These include the rationalization of services; a decrease in student numbers; difficulties in attracting and retaining staff and lack of funding (Bagley and Hillyard, 2019; Beach and Vigo Arrazola, 2020). In contrast to this pan-European policy trajectory and its cultural, socio-economic educational impact, previous research findings have championed the cause of small rural schools and their leadership, highlighting the potential they have for adding educational value, and the building of community engagement and social cohesion for sustainable change (Gill, 2017).

In this context, the paper focuses on the complexities associated with contemporary small rural primary school leadership in the post-conflict setting of Northern Ireland. It draws on case study research undertaken in five small rural primary schools and their surrounding diverse and divided communities, with a particular focus on the experiences and perspectives of the five principals of these schools. A recent scoping review of research on small rural schools in Europe (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2022), while revealing the similarities in the challenges facing rural school principals, found a significant number of studies remained under theorised (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2022). In attempting to fill this gap, the research findings are theoretically and conceptually informed by Bourdieu (1984) and his work on field, habitus and capital as a means of understanding practice. As the neo-liberal economic and political fields contaminate the field of education, a contextual understanding of the complex and shifting social space small rural primary school principals occupy, along with their habitus and the capital they deploy, is of central importance to understanding practice (Addison, 2009; Clarke and Wildy, 2004; Eacott, 2010; Torrance and Angelle, 2019). This understanding is especially relevant to a post-conflict divided society such as Northern Ireland. Thus, while the research context is Northern Ireland, the findings and outcomes from this study are of wider academic relevance and significance for those interested in a deeper theoretical understanding of small rural primary school leadership especially in divided and diverse post-conflict settings, on which research is extremely limited.

The Small School Rural Community Study, from which the sub-set of data presented in this paper are derived, adopted a mixed method explanatory sequential approach (Aldridge et al. 1999) involving an initial on-line questionnaire survey of all small rural primary school principals in Northern Ireland followed by five case-studies. Principals were emailed an information sheet about the study, a link to the online survey, an anonymous identifier to enter into the survey and asked to tick a consent form. A process of informed consent (Byrne, 2001) was adopted with each individual and group prior to commencement of individual and focus group interviews. The purpose of the wider study was to explore quantitatively and qualitatively the interrelationship between small rural schools and their communities. The online questionnaire covered a range of closed questions regarding general information, the challenges the school faced, and school-community relations. It also included an open-ended question where principals could leave any further comments they wished to make. The survey was emailed to the principals of 201 small rural schools (based on the definition of NISRA, 2016), and achieved a response rate of 43%. Out of the 91 respondents, fifty principals ticked a box agreeing to be contacted regards the possibility of participating in the case-study aspect of the research. The data presented in this paper are subsequently derived from a purposive sample range (Robinson, 2014) of five case study schools and interviews with their principals. The schools (two Controlled, two Maintained and one Integrated) and their communities were selected based on the type of school, school size, geographical location and willingness of the principal to participate. The name of the schools and the townlands and villages have been given pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. For data collection, the case-study phase utilised secondary source data such as schools’ prospectuses, semi-structured individual interviews (Denscombe, 2007) and focus group interviews (Gill and Baillie, 2017) with participants including school principals, teachers, parents, pupils and key school-community stakeholders. The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and analysed using NVivo software. For data analysis, an inductive approach was adopted producing the generation of initial codes, identification of specific themes, thematic review and report production (Braun and Clarke 2006). In particular, for the purposes of this paper, data were scrutinised for any evidence pertaining to the impact of different ‘fields’ (Bourdieu, 1984) on the professional experiences and practice of the five respondent small rural school principals.

In presenting our work on small rural schools, we contend that there is ‘a complex socio-cultural politics to school principal leadership that is context specific and multi-layered’ (Eacott, 2010, 226). Thus, while small rural primary school principals in Northern Ireland face many similar pressures and challenges to principals in secondary schools, urban settings and other European countries (Fargas-Malet and Bagley, 2021), school leadership is always context-specific (Clarke and Wildy, 2004) and culturally situated (Torrance and Angelle, 2019) and it must be viewed and understood accordingly. The contemporary organisational space confronting school principals was dominated by a layered interaction of a number of competing fields. We contend, in Bourdieusian terms, that it is the ways in which principals have to deal with these multiple pressures from different fields, that is at the centre of present-day small rural primary school leadership. In relation to the economic field and the concomitant workload pressures, school principals continually needed to balance their time as teaching principals between the responsibilities of teaching and the management and administration of the school. A situation, likened by one school principal, to continually ‘spinning plates’. In particular, as pupil numbers determined school survival, for these small rural schools, the threat of closure was an ever present and central concern. Moreover, it was found that as a post-conflicts society, the field of politics brought an added dimension in the form of peace and reconciliation to principal leadership in these small rural communities with two schools serving two religiously divided communities. In effect, the boundaries of the educational field have seemingly become increasingly permeated by the field of the economy and politics, informing the habitus and capital of small rural primary school principals and shaping their practice.

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