Rural Leaders and Education Policy: Innovative Practices for Political Engagement

• In Event: Leading Rurally: Lessons on Leadership in Australian and American Rural Education

Abstract

Purpose
Political debates over schooling often equate to contentious struggles over community identity (Author & Colleague, 2015). Rural education leaders are tasked with navigating these politicized environments while simultaneously providing equitable schooling experiences for students. In this paper, we identify leadership imperatives for rural administrators to facilitate their extra/local political engagement. We then use case study exemplars to illustrate how they can be implemented in practice.

Theoretical Framework
To situate our analysis of rural educational leaders’ negotiation of policy spaces, we employ critical place conscious leadership as a theoretical framework. Critical place-based leadership theory (Budge, 2010) posits that effective educational leaders understand the varied dimensions of their local context, and collaborate for collective problem-solving (Author & Author, 2020). Additionally, we use micropolitics to frame and analyze political encounters within rural communities. Micropolitics refers to individual and informal political engagement that is typified in rural communities (Williams, 2013).

Methods and Data Sources
We used a qualitative, multi-case study design for our study (Yin, 2009). The team used exemplary leadership examples from two separate leadership studies, both of which included participant interviews, observations, and educational documents as data sources (Yin, 2009). We used an a priori coding scheme for within and cross-case analysis of policy practices of rural educational leaders. To assess validity, we triangulated data for key findings, and used peer review to assess accuracy (Creswell & Poth, 2018).

Results
We identify five innovative leadership practices for political engagement that promote educational equity for rural communities:
1. Become a Community Insider. Educational leaders can develop relationships with community members across the socio-political spectrum to build understanding of local perspectives, challenges, and assets.
2. Build Local Coalitions for Equity. Rural leaders can leverage their roles as insiders to connect different groups and individuals across the community. This may include empowering coalitions of historically marginalized residents and/or, supporting local leaders who engage in equitable policy decision-making.
3. Engage in Productive Conflict. In collaboration with local coalitions, rural leaders can selectively identify key educational issues to engender equitable outcomes or practices and begin work to implement a policy shift. Productive conflict includes consistent communication, paired with shared open dialogue to collectively reach equitable outcomes.
4. Engage in Positive Public Relations. Center local, rural strengths while disrupting deficit narratives of rurality. Their insider status and local coalition building enables leaders to proactively communicate school and community assets.
5. Build State Coalitions. In creating coalitions across communities, rural leaders expand capacity to respond to areas of conflict from within the community and from broader political movements and policy decisions.

Significance
As evidenced in our research, as well as news publications, deep and contentious U.S. political divides that play out around rural schools influence the practices of rural educational leaders. Our leadership imperatives provide empirical and actionable recommendations for rural leaders to navigate politics.

Author

• Daniella Hall Sutherland, University of Vermont