Entry #8

Hi there!

Let me just say, before we dive in, how exciting and motivating it is that this blog hit 5000 views! Yay! Of course, when Dr. Mitton-Kükner and I discussed the potential of a blog at the beginning of the summer, we had hoped that it would be of interest to our friends in the B. Ed program and the general public. Still, as much as we hoped it would catch on, I don't think we expected that it would be this well received. So again, thank you - you've made our hearts soar!

Having so many views is exciting in itself, but what really excites me about them is knowing that most of them come from readers who: A) are currently or have been enrolled in StFX's Bachelor of Education program, B) are faculty members or staff at StFX, C) are friends or family of mine or Alanna, or D) went to high school with me or Alanna and are interested in what we're up to. Any of these kinds of readers are likely from, or have attended school in a rural part of Nova Scotia. I think that's really cool, and particularly relevant to what I've been thinking about lately.

See, when I'm looking for research articles, I search for key words and phrases that will get me the results I need: poverty, socioeconomic, struggling, readers, literacy, etc. Compiling these articles and looking at them side by side is interesting, because even though they cover a range of subjects in education, I can see patterns in the ideas that are presented in their work. That being said, it's actually even more interesting to find information that isn't common across articles, whether it's a teaching strategy that's far outside the box, or an aspect of literacy that no one's really talking about in academic circles yet. That stuff is really interesting, because it's new, and new stuff is... Well, interesting. You know what I mean.

Here's my problem: some of the information I've read shouldn't be new or uncommon. 

I'm particularly frustrated by the lack of research that there is on rural schools. If I were to go through the articles I've collected and summarized, I think that less than 1/4 would be about rural schools and literacy. Honestly, even if I looked at school-related subjects other than literacy, I don't think it would be much better. It seems like there's a push in research to focus on urban schools and "city kids," but why? Am I missing something?

I bring all of this up because, though poverty and literacy are pretty broad subjects for study, I'm ideally supposed to be finding articles that discuss them through a Canadian lens. After all, having a bibliography comprised entirely of work conducted in the US doesn't do much to complement research done in Nova Scotia. And, as much as finding studies about rural schools is a work thing, it's also of personal interest. My hometown, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, is a rural town about an hour and a half away from Halifax. Plus, my university, where I've spent the last 5 years, is in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Pretty much my whole life has been spent in rural Nova Scotia towns, so, yeah, I guess I'd like to know more about the schools that I grew up in and how to make them better, especially since I'll likely be teaching in one someday.

Image retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/21-006-x/2008008/maps-cartes/maps-cartes3-eng.htm

Again, knowing most of our readers are from some rural part of Nova Scotia is part of why this is blows me away. The way I see it, if there wasn't any interest in educational reform and helping students who experience poverty in rural Nova Scotia, none of you would be here reading. Yet, here you are, and here I am writing about it. So why such a lack of research? 

I was really happy to come across an article last week that expressed similar frustrations with this gap in research. Even better, the researcher, Azano (2015) gives a couple of examples of what makes rural schools different from urban ones, and how those differences are relevant to my work this summer: "Rural schools have more challenges than just limited resources... Apathy and lack of student engagement have also been cited as behaviors associated with rural students... If a student aspires to stay local and learn a trade, as perhaps familial generations have before, then teachers face the challenge of giving students meaningful (and plausible) responses to questions like, "Why are we reading Shakespeare?" (p. 268). Anyone who's been to a rural Nova Scotian high school, I think, can identify with most or all of this passage. Limited resources? Check. Students aspiring to stay local? Yup. Students having a hard time finding school meaningful? Definitely. Students not understanding the relevance and straight-up genius of Shakespeare? Yes, yes, and yes!

See, I think those are all really interesting points about education in general, like, student engagement and increasing motivation isn't an issue only encountered by rural schools. But since we know for sure that rural schools do struggle with those issues, why isn't there more research about it? Why don't we have more specific information about what students care about in rural contexts, especially when it can also be applied to urban ones? Poverty is a problem everywhere, that's a given, but we know that it's especially problematic in rural areas like Nova Scotia, so, again, why aren't places like it the focus of academic research concerning poverty, literacy, and education?

Image retrieved from https://www.novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/archive_news.asp?id=9828&ym=3

Azano says that, actually, "lots of folks [are] doing important work in rural places, but there is a limited amount of that work getting published in the journals of major academic associations" (p 268). Why aren't these brilliant people getting published? I mean, does it make sense to produce a bunch of research about equity and privilege while simultaneously prioritizing articles concerned with urban education over rural? I think not!

Schools across the board are complicated. They contain teachers and students whose personalities and lives are vastly different, meaning the systems that organize them are also necessarily different depending on the area they're in. I think in order to understand the big questions about poverty and literacy, we need to understand those different areas and how schools operate in them. Azano (my new favourite person) says that "there is so much that is powerful about rural contexts. Rural communities are resilient. They have grit and character... [But] rose-colored glasses only give permission to further ignore challenges or falsely claim that rural communities are harmonious and that folks there are living "the good life" (p. 269). Researchers and research journals need to take off the rose-coloured glasses! We need more information about students who are close to home, and we need it now!

I'm annoyed that I've spent 2 months collected articles and so few of them are about schools like the one I went to. I'm annoyed that there aren't more studies out there about how to help rural students see more value in English classes than basic reading and writing. I'm annoyed that the word "apathetic" is associated with rural students, and there's virtually nothing published to explain why. I know I'm not alone in feeling annoyed, because along with a lack of research on rural students comes  a greater lack in research about Indigenous students in rural communities and students who are economically disadvantaged. If we care about student success and equity, I think we need data from different school environments and types, and that's not going to happen if we have a weird caveat on rural spaces.

I do appreciate what I've read about urban schools and students from urban areas, I just want a more holistic idea of the big questions, and I don't think I can get that without knowing about rural areas too. I'll keep looking, of course, and here's hoping I find a bunch of work about rural high schools and literacy in the near future that will make all of this complaining irrelevant. Regardless, I appreciate your comments, and am grateful for you readers out there!

Chat soon!

Savannah MacDonald

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Azano, A. P. (2015). Addressing the Rural Context in Literacies Research. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(3), 267-269.