This proposal is a part of an ongoing project that concerns educational institutions in Swedish rural societies, with focus on digitization and entrepreneurship. Even though almost half of the population worldwide still live in rural societies (43% in 2021 according to Statista, 2022) there is lack of research concerning rural societies and rural education in comparison to research on city areas and educational institutions in those areas (Åberg-Bengtsson, 2009; Beach et al, 2019). This spare interest from research communities, and/or, from governmental institutions contributing with research grants, may of course have many explanations. Huge capital is generated in metropolitan areas, high status educational institutions are located there, and the political decisions are made within the larger cities. To this should be added the prejudgment views on rural communities and their citizens – particularly on the rural working class – exploited and transferred over the world via the dominating urban-centric middleclass media culture Walker-Gibbs, Ludecke, & Kline, 2015, 2018). The metro-centric cultures lack of concern for the less urbanized part of the world, are also seen in the often simplistic understanding of “rural” and “rural education” (Bagley and Hillyard, 2014; Beach et al, 2019; Their et al, 2021). ”The challenge for all rural research is how rural is defined” says Walker-Gibbs, Ludecke, & Kline (2018).

In research on the field “rural education” heterogeneous and context-dependent nature of rurality are empathized (Nelson et al 2021). Rural areas present a great diversity among them in terms of social, cultural, religious, economic as well as topographical characteristics both within and across countries (Showalter et al., 2017). On the other hand, it is well known that rural youth to lesser extent then their urban counterpart is prone to complete a college degree, but that does not mean a complete absence of factors in smaller rural communities that can be helpful for rural youth in relation to their future ambitions (Roberts & Grant, 2021; see also, Beach et al, 2019). It has been argued that teachers have greater opportunities to provide support for and information on students’ postsecondary options in rural areas then in non-rural ones. However, while teachers and school personal staff do influence, and support, their rural students, research also show that this support is often inadequate for helping students enact the necessary steps for achieving their postsecondary ambitions (Roberts & Grant, 2021).

With Massey (1994) we argue that social relations are what construct space, and therefore, particular social relations – stretched over time, with its politics, culture and its history – is what makes up a particular space. In our case this means that we view our particular rural social spaces as imbedded in the relational life of the school, and in the same time as stretched out over the world via the continuing digitalization. Our research sites are three rural municipalities. We focus on one elementary school at each research site. 

We concentrate on the places for education, in the era of digital tools, and possibilities for the schools and the communities to educate children and at the same time work with entrepreneurship, beneficial for the individuals as well as for the communities (Pettersson, 2018). Entrepreneurship in this project builds on the idea of relationships and mutual concerns as starting points for developing and acting on opportunities in diverse contexts (Berglund & Johannisson, 2012; Weicht & Jónsdóttir, 2021). The aim in this paper is to analyze and exemplify school-work and their local surroundings in relation to classroom work as well as to the social organization at the school with particular focus on entrepreneurship in the digital era.

In a broad sense, this study belongs to a Swedish branch of the Scandinavian Ethnography Tradition which began in the late 1960s (Larsson, 2006, [see also, Beach 2010; Beach & Larsson, 2022]). Typical of this tradition are long-term fieldwork, integration between locally situated events, relations between agents within institutional frameworks and sociocultural patterns developed over time together with a sensitivity to politics and economy that place the ethnographical site in a wider context. This time frame is also central to allowing for continual reflections on the complexity of human contexts. For example, on the relationship between the appropriate cultural, political, and social levels of the research site and on individual and group agency there. Moreover, research efforts include explicit theoretical perspectives and analysis, thereby providing an opportunity to use empirical data for the interrogation of macro and middle range theories and to develop (or ground) new ideas. The corpus of empirical data is the result of empirical and theoretical work conducted between 2022-2023. The methods applied have included: participant observation-based investigations, class-room studies, collection and analysis of documents, as well as formal and informal interviews with respondents (see also, Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Time, place, and objects were strategically selected (Jeffrey & Troman, 2004). The field notes, transcripts, and other data were analyzed continually. The project has been approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. We analyze relations, formal as well as informal, between different parts of the rural societies with focus on the schools and the relations within them. We analyze and describe how these three societies have structured their education, and the relations between the schools and the surrounding environment. We analyze and describe how they plan and execute education in the schools and within the classroom. We take particular interest the digital environment and entrepreneurial initiatives in relation to that. That may include local business-corporations, but cultural initiatives concerning art, music, and craft as well. It may also include cooperation between school and other part of society, but also between other municipalities or other schools.

Demographically, the results indicate that some of the rural municipalities have a steady population growth. When it comes to school and education, there is close cooperation with neighboring municipalities, which brings both opportunities and obstacles. In one of the municipalities, there are current digitization strategies with, for example, investments in a new digital center that works with digital participation for the municipality's various sections, including schools and libraries. Additionally, the latest investments made are a cultural environment program. The rural schools seem to play an important role as a unifying force in the local communities. The municipalities, as well as the local school leaders, put an interest in integrating the surrounding society in the school activities. In this pursuit, the local business life, sports and culture associations, as well as parents are involved, and digitization opens up opportunities for development of new relations. However, due to a large variation within the municipalities in terms of level of education and occupation between families and cultures, there is a challenge in offering equal opportunities for all pupils within the municipalities. For example, one of the rural schools in this study is placed within an area that has a strong agriculture culture as well as a well-developed but small community for craft and design. The schools itself are central employers in the villages, and at one of the schools, several teachers have themselves been students at the K-6 school, which indicates strong ties to the rural community as a social and cultural place. This contributes to a school culture that values the preservation of tradition which tends to delay the development of strategies to take advantage of the possibilities of digitization. But, on the other hand this delay might, at least partially, be beneficial for the classroom interaction and the pupils schooling.

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