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Rural School Redesign: Enacting Care and Mutuality through Responsive Professional Development

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Title: Rural School Redesign: Enacting Care and Mutuality through Responsive Professional Development
Language: English
Authors: Catharine Biddle
Source: Rural Educator. 2025 46(4):17-34.
Availability: National Rural Education Association. e-mail: theruraleducator@gmail.com; Web site: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/ruraleducator/
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 19
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Rural Schools, School Restructuring, Faculty Development, Small Schools, Ecology, Community Needs, School Community Relationship, School Closing, Educational Change, Empathy, Rural Education
Geographic Terms: Maine
ISSN: 0273-446X
Abstract: One of the challenges that rural schools face is a lack of school change models developed from a rural standpoint that position schools and their organizational improvement as a critical component of rural community development policy. This case study of the Rural Aspirations Project draws on an evaluation of their decade of work with 18 small and rural schools in Maine to provide curriculum support and responsive professional development. Positioning their work as a revelatory case, this article explores the organization's embodiment of a central component of care theory--mutuality--and the ways in which this principle enabled ecologies of care between school leaders, teachers, students and their communities as they enacted rural school design to subvert the modern school model and better inflect education around the needs of rural communities. The study draws on 20 interviews with school leaders, teachers, and community partners to understand the ways in which the design-centered approach to working with school staff (a) subverted the effects of rural school leadership turnover, (b) created new possibilities for codesigning community vitality, and (c) centered youth futures in rural places as an achievable reality. The study demonstrates a model of critical rural hope, achieved through mutuality and care, and presents a counternarrative to discourses of rural decline and school closure.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1490657
Database: ERIC
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  Data: Rural School Redesign: Enacting Care and Mutuality through Responsive Professional Development
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  Data: National Rural Education Association. e-mail: theruraleducator@gmail.com; Web site: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/ruraleducator/
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  Data: One of the challenges that rural schools face is a lack of school change models developed from a rural standpoint that position schools and their organizational improvement as a critical component of rural community development policy. This case study of the Rural Aspirations Project draws on an evaluation of their decade of work with 18 small and rural schools in Maine to provide curriculum support and responsive professional development. Positioning their work as a revelatory case, this article explores the organization's embodiment of a central component of care theory--mutuality--and the ways in which this principle enabled ecologies of care between school leaders, teachers, students and their communities as they enacted rural school design to subvert the modern school model and better inflect education around the needs of rural communities. The study draws on 20 interviews with school leaders, teachers, and community partners to understand the ways in which the design-centered approach to working with school staff (a) subverted the effects of rural school leadership turnover, (b) created new possibilities for codesigning community vitality, and (c) centered youth futures in rural places as an achievable reality. The study demonstrates a model of critical rural hope, achieved through mutuality and care, and presents a counternarrative to discourses of rural decline and school closure.
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      – Text: English
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      – SubjectFull: Faculty Development
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      – SubjectFull: Small Schools
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      – SubjectFull: Ecology
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      – SubjectFull: School Closing
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      – SubjectFull: Educational Change
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      – SubjectFull: Empathy
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      – SubjectFull: Rural Education
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Maine
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      – TitleFull: Rural School Redesign: Enacting Care and Mutuality through Responsive Professional Development
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