Young People’s Life and Schooling in Rural Areas

• Roberts and Green’s understanding of the need to broaden the social justice agenda in education research to include rural areas and more plural forms of capital in them than the purely economic form has been of value in the production of this book and has encouraged an extended and deepened focus on space, place, and social justice in our investigations. The first chapter sets the scene for this by presenting the research field, and some core questions for the research project relating to the dominance of urban studies in education (and social sciences more generally) and the silence on rural conditions and problems. The chapter also presents the research project and its theory, methodology and data production to provide a coherent background and frame for the thematic chapters so they can focus on their findings and discussions.  The following empirical chapters then focus on prominent themes emerging from the fieldwork and address both rural schooling and youth’s rural lives more generally. This is in line with the chosen theoretical understanding of place as central, requiring that education, as other institutions, is analysed in its socio-spatial context.   Chapter 2 focuses on place and draws especially on youth’s presentations of the researched places. It includes sub-themes concerned with the various images of places and of strategies to maintain place relations. In this respect there are similiarities, but also differences between the different ruralities. Chapter 3  moves the analyses to the different schools and their relations to the surrounding communities. Central to this, is the presentation of the places and their relations (conflicts, values, silences) found in teaching and their relations to other places. The analyses point to some differences between ruralities in this respect, with schools in the sparsely populated areas more likely to explicitly position themselves in the rural local context, and valorise the rural positively in education exchanges, content and interaction compared to the schools in small (de)industrialised communities, with positive effects on young people’s understandings. Chapter 4 focuses on young people’s views of their future options and their dreams of further education and work in relation to the local material conditions of the rural places, such as the labour markets. Gendered and classed characteristics are found to be of particular importance in the process of shaping the young people’s ideas of future careers, both limiting and broadening their views. Chapter 5 emanates from the chosen theoretical framework of the project that emphasises place as constantly in process and reshaped. In this respect, migration poses as a special challenge and an option for sparsely populated and de-populated areas. In the researched sites, we note an influx in recent years of refugees – particularly apparent with the unforeseen inflow of refugees from Syria during the fieldwork - but also of labour migrant from Northern Europe. Taking this as a starting point, this chapter analyses issues concerned with various groups’ understandings of place and its relations.   Chapter 6 continues with a focused analysis. It  addresses themes of gender and class. It presents previous research on gender and class in relation to rural youth and education and from this, moves to present some of the main findings from our research. These indicate less stereotyped gender relations than in much previous research, but still an overall trend towards masculine activities and values.  Chapter 7 focuses on relations between rural and urban areas, their respective conditions, problems and challenges. This is a central question for the book and this chapter aims to present a synthesising discussion. It draws on previous research of urban and rural youth and their schooling, and explores the under-researched rural dimension by use of our data to discuss rural understandings and responses to socio-spatial issues. The final chapter (chapter 8) draws together central themes from the previous chapters. These are concerned with various aspects of social structures, social relations, their implications for social inclusion, and how these are addressed in school and teaching. It also returns to the initial questions posed in the first chapters about rural – urban relations, metrocentricity and marginalisation....

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Rural schools

education justice

equality

ethnography

Lärarutbildning och pedagogisk yrkesverksamhet

Teacher Education and Education Work

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

bok (ämneskategori)