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This article highlights various paradoxes and false dichotomies in rural education research. Using Paulo Freire's theories of oppression and critical awareness, the article delineates a theoretical framework designed to explore a reframing of rural education. We propose that this reframing would serve as rural praxis for school leaders and teachers, and we make use of these theories to discuss school leader and teacher preparation programs. This reframing for the field of rural education research proposes a way through contradictions and dispels deficit narratives underlying conceptions of rurality and theoretical constructs in rural education research.
Introduction
Last August, at the International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education (ISFIRE), we presented to colleagues from around the world about deficit ideology and the role it plays in perceptions of rurality. It was a full room of maybe 50 people - researchers from Australia, Canada, and the United States of America (USA); rural superintendents - a few from remote districts with one-room schools; teachers in rural communities; education policy experts; advocates from non-profit organizations; and a robust and earnest group of doctoral students in rural education. This assembly needed no prodding to engage in dialogue about the deficit narratives ubiquitous in the literature on rural education. Moreover, they were eager and willing to discuss how these narratives play a role in their lived experiences as rural community members. For the duration of the conference, we heard numerous attendees circling back to this idea of avoiding or resisting deficit ideologies. Many asked us directly how in fact to do that. How do you disrupt a foregone tradition?
Here, we offer more dialogue in that regard. National media and social scientists alike have begun to examine with renewed interest the ways in which rural communities are uniquely affected by broader global and national trends, such as regional job loss, the outmigration of young people, the aging of the population, and rising incidences of substance use disorders (Brown & Schafft, 2011; Monnat & Brown, 2017; Petrin, Schafft, & Meece, 2014). Why are these challenges viewed tangentially as rural ones as opposed to issues of national or global importance? While these issues affect other communities around the country, the unique needs of rural communities in confronting these challenges have gone unaddressed as...