Does Socialization in Rural Schools Build or Blur Community Boundaries: The Case of Southern Croatia

• In Event: Inequality and attainment in schools

Proposal

Word count: 949 (not including references)

Schools do not only create human capital, but they are also considered central to democratic development as they prepare entire generations of young people for the future role as responsible, engaged, and civic adults. Flanagan et al. (2010) describe schools as mini polities, where youth prepare for future citizenship responsibilities through civic engagement in school and community activities. Links between schools and local communities that develop through these activities can later translate into students' engagement with larger polity and their country politics. Schools that foster engaged citizenship are as important for democracy as the existence of an active civic society (Rappaport, 2015). Further, community theory consistently points to the education as a central institution for sustaining rural communities. Historically, a sense of community was a positive educational outcome. But, recent revisions of community theory find this overly positive concept of community simplistic and problematic (Corbett, 2014). Education that builds community boundaries, and unity within these boundaries may produce effects contrary to the mission of forming democratic, inclusive, and global citizenship. We recognize the tension between these two relevant roles that schools have in the rural communities: democratic development, and community cohesion, and use it as a theoretical foundation for this study.

Rural spaces are generally known to be bastions of tradition, that often depart from liberal, open, and inclusive society norms (Sikic, 2007). For a post-conflict society as Croatia, to end the process of reconciliation, especially in the areas that were affected by the 1990s Homeland War for Independence, civic inclusiveness is an imperative (Human Rights Watch, 2006; Clark, 2013). Schools are key to this process to succeed (Davies, 2004; Corkalo-Biruski & Ajdukovic, 2007). According to previous empirical research, southern Croatia is known to be one of the most conservative regions in the country and prone to nationalistic ideology (Grdesic, 2013). To understand if youth diverge from the established values and attitudes, a pilot study conducted in that region in Croatia has a specific significance. Second, having in mind the negative demographic circumstances in rural Croatia, characterized by outmigration and aging populations (Croatian Bureau of Statistics, 2017), coupled by rural school closures-researching rural youth socialization and the connection to their communities is crucial for understanding the future of these vulnerable spaces. The fate of rural decline, linked to youth out-migration, is not solely a Croatian issue, but it is an issue that majority of transitional societies face (Nugin, 2016; Meyer, 2018). Thus, the results of the research presented can be discussed in relation to other post-socialist or transitional societies, and contributes to the topic of sustainability of rural communities in these societies.

While school and community engagement is widely researched topic, rural schools are generally left out in these discussion. But, taking into account specificities of rural communities, their politics, and the hardships, research focused on schools as mini polities in rural context might yield counterintuitive results. The research presented with this paper responds to this gap in the research of youth socialization within rural schools. With the socialization and community building theories framework, we ask questions about students' perceptions of rural school connections to the local communities, and students' attitudes towards non-community members.

Drawing from prior literature that points to schools as central spaces for community building, and that discusses schools as key institutions for building inclusive societies, we ask two specific questions within this study:

1. Do students perceive schools as community building institutions?
2. To the extent that students perceive schools as community building institutions, are the social boundaries of community constructed as inclusionary or exclusionary?

In the Spring of 2017 group of researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Split carried out a survey on young people's identity, aspirations, attitudes, and engagement in four rural schools in Dalmatia, the Southern region in Croatia. The survey was originally developed for rural schools in the U.S. The questionnaire was adapted to Croatian context, and translated into Croatian language. The sample consisted of two high schools situated on Croatian islands, one high school in the Dalmatian hinterland, and one high school in the coastal area. Altogether, 559 students filled out the survey. Schools in the sample attract students from rural regions, and they were selected purposefully based on this key characteristic.

We take three steps to analyze the data and to answer two questions. The first analytical approach is a descriptive analysis of the data, using a listwise deletion of missing data points. In the second step we build a school-community relations scale, as a measure of students' perception of opportunities to develop community relations within their schools; and students' perspective on community boundaries scale, as a measure of students' inclusionary or exclusionary sentiments towards non-community members (Table 1). With the school-community relations scale Cronbach alpha=0.77, and the community boundaries scale Cronbach alpha=0.92, we will use these two outcome variables for the multivariate regression analyses, controlling for students' socioeconomic and family background, gender, political ideology, and educational aspirations.

This empirical study offers new perspectives on community building and democratic socialization in rural schools in a transitional society. Specifically, by addressing students' perceptions on community building and attitudes towards non-community members, we are looking to understand the future of rural communities in southern Croatian. With these new perspectives on rural youth, policy makers, local leaders, and educators might develop communication strategies and engagement programs for revival of rural communities. These programs could make these communities attractive for-not only resident youth to stay there, but even more for other population to move there, the success of which depends in part on the relative inclusivity of rural communities. In that respect, this research contributes to broader aim of demographic revival and sustainability of rural areas in Croatia.


References:
Corbett, M. (2014). The ambivalence of community: A critical analysis of rural education's oldest trope. Peabody Journal of Education, 89(5), 603-618.
Croatian Bureau of Statistics. (2017) Demographic Trends. URL: https://www.dzs.hr/Hrv/important/Interesting/articles/Demografski%20trendovi.htm (Retrieved: September 6, 2018)
Čorkalo Biruški, D., & Ajduković, D. (2008). Separate schools-a divided community: The role of the school in post-war social reconstruction. Review of Psychology, 14(2), 93-108.
Davies, L. (2004). Building a civic culture post-conflict. London Review of Education, 2(3), 229-244.
Flanagan, Constance, Tara Stoppa, Amy K. Syvertsen, and Michael Stout. (2010). Schools and social trust. Pp. 307-329 in Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth. Meyer.
Grdešić, M. (2013) Spatial Analysis of "Red" & "Black" Croatia: An Exploratory Study. Politička misao: časopis za politologiju 50(1), 183-203.
Nugin, R. (2014). "I think that they should go. Let them see something". The context of rural youth's out-migration in post-socialist Estonia. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 51-64.
Rapoport, P. A. (2015). Global aspects of citizenship education: Challenges and perspectives. In The State of Global Education (pp. 43-56). Routledge.
Sikic, L. (2007). Gendered Values and Attitudes Among Rural Women in Croatia. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 38(3), 45-476.

Authors

• Renata Horvatek, Penn State University

• Kai Schafft, Penn State University

• Sanja Stanic, University of Split