Browsing by Subject "Rural education"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    The Early History and Background of the School of Agriculture at University Farm, St. Paul
    (University of Minnesota, 1941) Boss, Andrew; University of Minnesota, School of Agriculture; Franzmann, Carl A.
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    Ethnicity, poverty, and secular schooling: Muslim Hui students' identity negotiations in rural China
    (2014-08) Wu, Xinyi
    Intrigued by the heterogeneous development of rural and urban China, persistent poverty in rural ethnic minority regions, and dilemmatic quality compulsory education provided for ethnic regions as a key to poverty alleviation, this dissertation sets out to examine the rural appropriation and implementation of compulsory education and its impacts on the lives of students from one particular ethnic group, Muslim Hui in Xihaigu, Southern part of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwestern China, as they respond to changing rural dynamics, fighting against poverty, and trying to maintain ethnoreligious identity.Informed by critical theory and constructivism paradigms as well as studies of ethnicity and ethnic identity, cultural reproduction theory, and cultural production theory, this study use critical ethnography as a method of research to particularly examine how secular schooling is practiced in this rural and Muslim Hui concentrated region and is lived everyday through routinized pedagogical practices and administrative maneuvers. Most importantly, through the voices of local Muslim Hui, it explores parents' changing views of secular schooling and how the changed views affect Muslim Hui students' exercise their power to participate in school activities, whether they resist against and struggle with secular schooling or straddle across secularity and ethnoreligiosity. In the end, this study attempts to make a theoretical contribution by challenging the binary relationship between the dominating and the dominated that guided majority of studies of ethnic groups in China. Muslim Hui students in my study exhibit diverse reactions and responses to the dominant Han culture and constantly negotiate a life of their own.
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    “Stronger With Each Other”: A Case Study of a Shared Superintendency and Multi-District Partnership in Rural Minnesota
    (2020-09) Chamberlain, Rachel
    This study of a multi-district superintendency in rural Minnesota reveals how schools act as spaces where community boundaries expand as a result of partnership and collaboration. The project, informed by grounded theory, seeks to fill a key gap in understanding the experiences of school staff and community members in multi-district resource sharing. In addition, it provides insight into how the sensemaking of rural community identity is negotiated through the school-community relationship. I used theories of positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Mukund, 2016; Biddle & Azano, 2016), critical theory (Delpit, 1988; Foucault; 1977) and social frontiers (Burt, 1992; Miller, Scanlan, & Phillippo, 2017) as conceptual tools. The notion of boundary-spanning (Tajfel & Turner, 1985; Lamont & Molnár, 2002) was utilized in the analysis of how school staff and community members defined rurality and who was considered an insider or outsider in their communities. This qualitative case study utilizes interviews, observation, and document analysis to provide an in-depth look at how rural community members and school personnel perceive the efforts of their district to share resource and staff positions with a neighboring district. A consideration of history and the significance of place in rural communities provides context for findings that reveal the ways community identity is shaped by shared struggle and survival. When this experience is extended to a neighboring district, community identity expands to include those outside the traditional boundaries of geography. School leaders, including the district superintendent, are key actors in boundary-spanning and the bridging of resources between districts. However, this study also shares how students, families, and community members play equally important roles in increasing the permeability of community boundaries.