Rural schools in light of market policies in rural schools: A meta-ethnographic analysis

Abstract

The application of competitive market policies in different national contexts has turned the geographical, economic and social characteristics of school location into an object of market value. This has potentially positive or negative effects on rural school-teachers’ discourses and practices on family and community involvement. Using a meta-ethnographic methodological design, the aim of this article has been to explore this dimension of difference based on a sample of twenty publications of ethnographic studies or similar qualitative research in different European countries. The article has revealed the existence of different logics of participation. These logics include discourses and practices closer to democratic models of participation in schools in remote areas, participation models based on customer acquisition in more accessible schools, and models corresponding to a bureaucratic perspective on participation in some other places. The discourses seem to correspond to the interactions that take place inside and outside each of the spaces as an expression of their different logics of survival in the context of the market.