Understanding Rural Communities and Education Policy

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to understand the complex past and present of rural communities and rural education policy. This first part of this chapter examines the social, economic, and political forces that have shaped rural communities in the last few decades. It does this by looking at the development of the multifunctional rural transition framework, including the impact of neoliberal policies on rural restructuring and notions of resilience and responsibility as the new rural subjectivity. The second part of the chapter analysis how from the socially progressive education policies of the 1970s rural issues have been decentered—from the core to the periphery of these policy frameworks.