On Resisting "Awayness" and Being a Good Insider: Early Career Scholars Revisit Coladarci's Swan Song a Decade Later

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Rural Education Research

Abstract

This theoretical essay critically examines the impact of Coladarci’s (2007) “Improving the yield of rural education research: An editor’s swan song” composed at the conclusion of his tenure as the Journal of Research in Rural Education’s editor. Using boundary theory and “awayness” as a metaphor for understanding community, we review how Coladarci’s work has been utilized through a citation analysis, illustrating the ways this piece serves to socialize new researchers to rural education research. We then undertake Coladarci’s invitation to further discuss what might define a contribution to the rural education scholarship field and propose several additional considerations, including analyses of how power manifests across space and the criticality of a topic to rural schools and communities.

Authors

• Erin McHenry-Sorber, West Virginia University

• Catharine Biddle, University of Maine

• Daniella Hall Sutherland, Clemson University