Education is fundamental for individual empowerment, community development, and societal progress. It equips individuals with essential skills and knowledge, while fostering social cohesion and economic resilience. In rural areas, ensuring access to quality education is crucial, as it has the potential to break cycles of poverty and marginalization. Schools play a central role in these communities, not just as places of learning, but as hubs for social interaction and opportunity. From a societal perspective, keeping children in school and supporting their educational success builds a more equitable and sustainable future for all. India provides a relevant and critical context for studying sociological connections in education given the country’s vast diversity and deeply entrenched inequalities (Nambissan & Rao, 2012). Rural schools in India share similarities with those globally, such as remote location, minimal infrastructure and resources, sparse population, and multi-grade teaching (Lamb & Glover, 2014; Wang & Shen, 2022; Kalaoja & Pietarinen, 2009). However, the unique interplay of caste, class and religious stratification, experienced more acutely in rural areas, shapes India’s educational landscape, adding complexity to the difficult teaching and learning circumstances of rural schools (Ganguly & Kadam, 2016; Madan, 2019).
Oversight of the unique circumstances of rural schools in educational decision-making is a globally experienced phenomenon, including in Finland. Even though the physical, social and pedagogical realities of schools differ significantly based on their location, population size, learners’ family backgrounds etc., educational discourse often considers schools as homogenous teaching and learning spaces (Kalaoja & Pietarinen, 2009). The potential for transformation in rural schools underscores a critical need for support through policy initiatives, school-level interventions, and development programs worldwide. Unfortunately, many programs are designed in isolation, overlooking the ground realities of the very communities they aim to serve (Funnel & Rogers, 2011). Hence, recognizing and addressing the underlying mental models—deeply ingrained assumptions and beliefs—of community stakeholders is an essential part of transformative work (Senge, 1990).
Schools as Learning Organization (SLO) model is increasingly advocated by scholars (Fullan, 1995; Senge, 2012; Kools & Stoll, 2016; Harris & Jones, 2018) to ensure school effectiveness based on its emphasis on shared goals and vision, individual and collective learning of all members, and a culture of continuous inquiry and feedback (Kools & Stoll, 2016). It is a wholistic, cross-cutting, and action-oriented model that has found use in designing interventions as well as assessing the effectiveness of schools (Bowen et al., 2007; Silins, Mulford & Zarins, 2004). However, the research base of SLOs is limited to affluent urban contexts in the global North and does not necessarily suit the circumstances of rural school settings (Harris et al., 2006). Furthermore, narratives about teaching and learning in low-SES contexts often adopt a ‘deficit model’, i.e., focusing on obstacles rather than opportunities (Sowton, 2021). It gives rise to the need for a framework that leverages the strengths and resilience of rural contexts through appreciative inquiry in addition to addressing their specific needs and challenges.
This qualitative study employs a participatory approach to explore the mental models and practices of school stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, and local administrators across 8 rural schools in lower Himalayas) that facilitate or hinder the development of rural schools into learning organizations.
The study aims to investigate the perceptions and practices of stakeholders in low-SES rural Indian schools that contribute towards organizational learning, and highlight their need for support. 

Research Questions

1. What ongoing school practices in rural Indian schools can be linked to the dimensions of Learning Organizations? 

2. How do different stakeholders perceive their school’s needs in order to build and improve the learning community? 

This qualitative study adopts a participatory approach to explore the mental models, everyday practices, and needs of teachers, students, parents and administrators within rural school communities. Data was collected during Sept-October 2025 for four weeks through participatory observations accompanied by 22 interviews (individual and group interviews) with teachers, students and parents across eight rural schools and the Director of the State Institute of Educational Management and Training. Participatory observation allowed me to build the relationship and trust necessary for minimizing the influence of my presence, as well as dive deep into people’s values, beliefs, and behaviors to understand ongoing organizational practices. Taking a relational constructivist orientation, I kept the interviews largely unstructured (McNamee & Hoskin, 2012), leaving space for participants to tell their story in response to a broad question. Observations and interview data together are being analysed using hybrid thematic analysis that combines a data-driven inductive as well as a deductive a-priori approach. The analysis began with the creation of a code manual derived from relevant literature. The reliability of the manual was tested through analyzing the first two interviews and adjusting the manual as needed. Even though the manual served as the starting point for the analysis, many more data-driven codes emerged during the analysis. The codes are now being organized to find connection and relations between them, and identify relevant themes. The codes themes will eventually be categorized into overarching themes that will serve as the core findings. In a follow-up study, a systematic narrative review will also synthesize literature on rural schools, integrating the findings with empirical data to create an adapted Schools as Learning Organizations (SLO) framework tailored to the unique strengths and needs of rural schools serving low-SES (socio-economic status) student populations.

Preliminary results, through initial emerging themes, highlight a strong and significant role of teacher-driven community initiatives in the development of otherwise unsupported rural schools, and hence call for an appreciative inquiry approach in research and policy planning for rural schools that build on the existing strength, resilience, and active voice of these communities in addition to focusing on their needs and challenges

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