Presentation 3: National Survey and Results

• In Event: Advancing the Field of Rural Education Research: Research Agendas for Scholars, Practitioners, Policy Makers, and Funders

Abstract

The 2022-2027 Rural Research Agenda centers spatial and educational equity with five additional interconnected themes - policy and funding, teacher/leader recruitment, retention, and preparation, college and career trajectory, community partnerships and relationships, and health and wellness - circling the core category. The agenda conceptualizes Spatial and Educational Equity in two forms: a) spatial inequity, or how equity challenges relate to place and b) how equity, or rather, inequity related to diverse identities and social circumstances, present within the rural school and community. Educational equity is connected to spatial equity through intersections of place, diverse identities, and social circumstances.
This work was guided by combining an asset-based and systems-informed approach to problem formation with attention to the intersectionality of the diverse issues affecting rural schools, school systems, communities and places. Intersectionality was essential to how we understood the work of framing research problems out of participant experiences and their own framing of its challenges (Banerjee et al., 2021; Crenshaw, 1991; Rodo-DeZarate & Baylina, 2018). This approach also allowed us to hold space for the complex ways participants called attention to issues of spatial and educational equity along multiple lines of race, socioeconomic status, gender, ability, sexual orientation and gender presentation as well other social identities.
This presentation will provide an overview of the data collection and analysis methods used to support the formation of the 2022-2027 research agenda, with a particular focus on the results of the national survey that was conducted in 2021 as part of the broader mixed methods research design. In 2021, NREA administered a survey to its national membership asking for them to rank a series of topics for their importance to their practice, as well as several open-ended questions allowing them to expand on the rationale for their rankings.
A total of 353 completed surveys were analyzed using descriptive statistics (Gravetter & Wallnau, 2017), data-visualization strategies, and, for the open-ended items, qualitative content analysis. This was followed by nine semi-structured interviews and six focus groups with rural education stakeholders, including teachers, school leaders, researchers, and policy-makers. Data analysis included open and axial coding of interviews, focus groups, and open-ended survey responses as well as the use of a priori codes drawing upon the previous research agenda’s ten priority areas (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss; 2015).
Each of the major themes in the research agenda is accompanied by framing questions and suggested lines of inquiry to support extending our understanding of the field in this area, informed by the perspectives of practitioners throughout the United States who participated in the survey, interviews and focus groups. We believe that this paper will be of interest to the AERA Rural Education SIG because of its potential for informing funder priorities, research collaborations, and future policy.

Authors

• Catharine Biddle, University of Maine
  Presenting Author

• Pamela J. Buffington, Education Development Center, Inc.
  Presenting Author

• Sara Lohrman Hartman, Ohio University
  Presenting Author