Unpacking Multiple Realities of Rural School Politics

Chapter
Part of the Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices book series (STEP, volume 14)

Abstract

Helping youth understand and shape what happens in local life as a means of constructing attachment to place and prioritizing knowledge production over consumption is of increasing importance to educators interested in democracy. Promoting such aims in the face of competing pressures to conform to informal networks of power and control in schools can be challenging for any teacher, particularly novices. In this chapter, I examine how my past experiences as a beginning teacher in a rural elementary school in the Northeast USA, where I pioneered curricular and pedagogical innovations in a small rural community, helped inform my efforts to navigate political complexity as a teacher educator. Drawing from personal journals and documents from my years as a beginning teacher, alongside transcripts of recent conversations with former colleagues who helped shape the political climate of my rural context, I illuminate multiple realities of rural school politics. Fifteen years later, how do I un/knowingly re-experience the realities of marginalization, values, and place as a teacher educator? How have they influenced my pedagogical purposes, practices, and priorities? What is their broader relevance to rural teacher education, internationally, today?

Keywords

Micropolitics Rurality Self-study Teacher education Novice teachers Identity 
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Faculty of EducationMonash UniversityMelbourneAustralia

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