Rural Education and Literacies: An Introduction

Abstract

This volume explores the relationship between literacy studies and rural education, expressly from a transnational perspective. It is worth clarifying, at the outset, what we are dealing with, in bringing together not only two quite distinct fields of scholarship but also researchers from a range of countries, with contributors from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Finland. First, we see the need to take into account the possibility that there may be quite different ruralities in play, but also, conceivably, quite different literacies. Indeed, it seems highly likely that there are, across and within national contexts, differing constructions of the rural, as well as different manifestations of rurality, depending in part on geography but also on culture (Donehower, Hogg, and Schell 2011, p. 10). Second, what counts as literacy, and also literacy studies, needs to be (re)articulated, and made explicit. This is because there may be distinct affordances in different scholarly cultures and different educational systems, from primary schooling right up to graduate work and beyond. Different things are imaginable or intelligible, according to standpoint, and acknowledgment of the now thoroughly globalized nature of academic inquiry, including that associated with both literacy studies and rural education. Hence, there are different rural imaginaries evident across this book, and divergent experiences and histories, despite important commonalities and connections.