National Rural Education Association Research Agenda 2022–2027

• In Event: Highlighting the Future of Rural Education: Research Agendas for Rural Pre-K–12 and Postsecondary Education

Abstract

The National Rural Education Association (NREA) is a non-profit organization with a foundational mission to provide advocacy for rural schools and communities. NREA’s journal, The Rural Educator, provides an essential outlet for rural education research. The National Rural Education Association Research Agenda – 2016-2021 charted a research path focused on building rural educational capacity and addressing rural students’ educational attainment with a goal of helping address the scarcity of education research (DeYoung, 1987; Kannapel & DeYoung, 1999; Stapel & DeYoung, 2011). With the five year window of the research agenda coming to a close, the organization is currently in the process of updating the rural education research priorities. Consistent with the 2016-2021 research agenda, the goal is to develop a set of research priorities for the next five years that are responsive to and reflective of the diverse people that rural America represents. As the political climate of the last five years continues to foster a rift between rural vs. non-rural America and perpetuate deficit-orientated rural stereotypes, rural research priorities that reflect the needs, concerns, and strengths of rural stakeholders are more important than ever.

Currently, NREA’s Research and Higher Education Committee is engaged in a comprehensive research project designed to examine stakeholder perspectives of rural educational research priorities. This mixed-methods research project includes a survey that will be distributed to NREA’s membership and other rural education networks that to collect information about participants’ perspectives regarding the importance of and need for conducting research in 15 key areas of rural education. Survey data will be analyzed to determine participants' ratings of research priorities in rural educational settings (Gravetter & Wallnau, 2017). In addition, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with rural education stakeholders, including teachers, school leaders, researchers, and policy-makers, and will be coded using qualitative data techniques to reveal recurrent themes and patterns (Creswell, 1998; Patton, 2015; Saldaña, 2021). Coding processes will be iterative and will allow broad themes to emerge, from which narrower codes can be identified. Utilizing an inductive approach, specific coding processes will be chosen during data analysis (Saldaña, 2021). All data will be collected by November 2021 and data analysis will occur in the fall and winter of 2021 in order to ensure the research agenda is ready to be presented at AERA in April of 2022.

The re-envisioned NREA research agenda will guide future rural educational research, significantly impacting the ability of rural education stakeholders to engage in advocacy on local, state, and national levels. As such, the new NREA research agenda will highlights the strengths of rural people and places while also recognizing inequities that perpetuate harmful rural stereotypes and create barriers in accessing educational opportunities. Aligning with this year’s conference theme of ‘Cultivating Equitable Education Systems for the 21st Century,’ NREA’s new research agenda has the potential for wide-sweeping impact to increase educational equity for the more than 9.3 million rural students in the United States (Showalter et al., 2019), making this research project one of utmost importance for all rural education stakeholders.

Authors

• Sara Lohrman Hartman, Ohio University

• Kessa Roberts, Southern Methodist University

• Pamela Joy Buffington, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Catharine Biddle, University of Maine