Who Conducts Rural Education? Toward an Ethics of Positionality

• In Event: Conducting Educational Research Within and for Rural Communities: An Exploration of Research Methodologies

Abstract

Who conducts rural education and where they are located is the focus of this paper. Rural research by those who do not live in rural communities tends to be essentially a study of the other. This does not mean that rural education research is much different from a lot of education research, which as Lisa Delpit (2006) says, is about “other people’s kids” and ultimately about other people’s problems (or perhaps more precisely about other people as problems). What it does mean is that rural research is particularly prone to the challenges of doing research on/with the other which has been highlighted in contemporary discussions of academic research in marginalized and racialized communities (Tuliwah Smith, 1999). What it also means is that rural education researchers are not typically representatives of the local “lifeworld” (and its values, politics, cultures, structure of feeling, and struggle), but of what Habermas (1985) calls the technical-rational focused “system world”.
In this paper, we draw the comparison to aboriginality here deliberately to discuss the way that rurality, has a spatial element that both stands in opposition to the urban and the suburban, but also tends to have an intimate connection to natural spaces. At the very least what is at stake here is the ambivalent relationship between settler populations and the land, a dynamic that has inspired generations of American country music, which is fundamentally about displacement. We suggest that rurality, or the designation of a rural “identity,” typically involves an intimate identification with a place, a sense of belonging to that place, and perhaps even a sense of attachment and even entitlement that is rooted in time spent there across generations. These rooted narratives have always been contested though and mobility is more the norm for most people than persistence. Green and Letts’ (2007) trialectical analysis of a real and imagined rurality that draws on Lefebvre’s (1990) multiple spatial layering is helpful here as we work to sort out the complex layering of space and place. This complex layering also suggests the need for a conscious ethical awareness on the part of rural educational researchers.
As educational researchers we believe that it is important to highlight a reflexive positional consciousness that is politically committed and engaged. The work of researchers is best rooted in the communities they aim to serve (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). This paper essentially explores the question of how then, do researchers root their work in the rural communities where they live as well as serve? We draw from five ethnographic research studies we conducted with young people in rural Nova Scotia to illustrate examples of what such a reflexive examination can uncover. We discuss factors that shape our own interpretation of the community where we conduct research. We then describe, with examples, ways that we attempt to create opportunities for research participants to reflect on how they experience and perceive their community. Finally, we reflect on considerations that influence how we share research with participants, the community and beyond.

Authors

• Michael J. Corbett, University of Tasmania

• M. Tanya Brann-Barrett, Cape Breton University