Call for Special Issue: Rural Education as Cultural Wealth: Disrupting Urbanormative Assumptions
Guest Editors:
Dr. Bonnie Stelmach, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta
Research interests: rural education, place-based pedagogies, educational leadership, parent involvement, qualitative research
Dr. Jaye Johnson Thiel, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Alabama
Research interests: rural childhoods, postqualitative inquiry, multispecies relations, place-based pedagogies, embodied literacies, childhood studies
Aim of Special Issue
In this special issue, we aim to showcase rural strengths, disrupt urbanormative and metrocentric assumptions and practices, and demonstrate how rural school and community innovations enrich broader conversations about educational leadership, policy development and implementation, and educational equity.
Context
Rural(ness) is often caricatured and stereotyped in a binary fashion. On the one hand, rural conjures beauty in its landscapes, and a sense of simplicity and unity in ways of living. On the other hand, rural(ness) often resides at the “bottom of the cultural hierarchy” where rural communities are cast as “inferior, irrelevant, or obsolete” (Fulkerson & Thomas, 2016, p. 2). Fulkerson and Thomas (2016) captured these patterns of thinking with the term urbanormativity defined as “the view that urban life is normal and superior, while rural life is aberrant and inferior” (p. 3). Along this line, scholars such as Corbett (2020) have documented the subtle yet powerful force of urbanormativity on rural youth, demonstrating how they are schooled into a “mobility imperative” that normalizes departure from rural communities as the definition of success. Others, like Eppley (2011), have argued that the sanctioning of decontextualized teaching and learning through the promotion of standardized reading programs constitute a pedagogy of erasure in which rural children’s voices are not only hushed but intentionally silenced.
Rural education is vulnerable to these polarized and essentialized portrayals, resulting in practical consequences that are well known to rural school authorities (e.g., teacher recruitment and retention). When it comes to educational research and policy, fewer studies are “inherently rural” (Coladarci, 2007), and rural school leaders find themselves navigating and negotiating metrocentric policy through adaptation. Consequently, rural schools are ultimately leaders in innovation and creativity, though dominant narratives seldom frame them this way. This special issue aims to be a corrective in this regard.
There has been increasing attention given to disrupting and unsettling the rural-urban and deficit-idyll binaries (Azano et al., 2022), exploring the complexities of rural relations and practices (Corbett & Gereluk, 2020; Harmon & Johnson, 2025), and putting rural at the center of social justice agendas (Cuervo, 2016; McNamee et al., 2025). We are inspired, for example, by Crumb and colleagues’ (2023) development of the rural cultural wealth framework, a funds of knowledge approach that “acknowledges the strength and resilience of rural people” (p. 126). We call for manuscripts that showcase rural education in this spirit.
Call for Contributions
Contributions could address the innovations of rural schools and leaders through:
- Resistance to urbanormativity, metrocentricity, the mobility imperative, and other critical lenses applied to entrenched assumptions
- Critical examinations of the conceptualization of “innovation” in rural contexts
- Explorations of rural cosmopolitanism
- Diverse rural identities and intersectional perspectives
- School and system leadership in rural contexts
- Rural teacher education and induction
- Rural teacher and leader professional identity
- Policy development and implementation
- School-community partnerships, family engagement, and intergenerational learning
- Rural school choice e.g. alternative models, school closure
- Teaching and leadership in remote and circumpolar regions
- Pedagogical innovation in rural schools (e.g. place-based learning, emergent learning, agriculture-based schools, Wild Pedagogies)
- Context-specific responses to rural challenges (e.g. teacher and leader recruitment and retention, economies of scale, resource management, policy implementation)
- Student experience, agency, and pathways
- Indigenous education in rural contexts (e.g. land-based pedagogies)
- Inclusive education in rural contexts (e.g. complex learning needs, English Language Learners, non-binary gender identity)
- Teacher, student, and family well-being in rural schools and communities
- Environmental stewardship and sustainability practices
- Technology as place-responsive practice (e.g. distance learning)
- Advances in post-secondary education related to rural education
- International perspectives on rural education innovation
We welcome theoretical and conceptual work, and reports on empirical studies that challenge dominant deficit narratives and foreground rural innovation, creativity, and strengths in the face of complex realities. Consistent with the focus on innovation, we invite contributions employing a variety of traditional and emerging methodological approaches and theoretical analyses suited to rural education questions. Complete manuscripts and abstracts for planned papers may be submitted. For planned papers, please include a title and abstract (300 words max.).
Drs. Bonnie Stelmach and Jaye Johnson Thiel
Guest Editors
References
Azano, A. P., Eppley, K., & Biddle, C. (2022). Unsettling rurality: Mapping a third space. In A. P. Azano, K. Eppley, & C. Biddle (Eds.), The Bloomsbury handbook of rural education in the United States (pp. 1—4). Bloomsbury Academic.
Coladarci, T. (2007). Improving the yield of rural education research: An editor’s swan song. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 22(3), 1—9.
Corbett, M. (2020). Learning to leave: The irony of schooling in a coastal community. West Virgina University Press.
Corbett, M., & Gereluk, D. (2020). Rural teacher education: Connecting land and people. Springer.
Crumb, L, Chambers, C., Azano, A., Hands, A., Cuthrell, K., & Avent, M. (2023). Rural cultural wealth: Dismantling deficit ideologies of rurality. Journal for Multicultural Education, 17(2), 125–138. https://www.emerald.com/insight/2053-535X.htm
Cuervo, H. (2016). Understanding social justice in rural education. Palgrave Macmillan.
Eppley, K. (2011). Reading mastery as a pedagogy of erasure. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 26(13), 2—5.
Fulkerson, G. M., & Thomaas, A. R. (Eds.). (2016). Reimagining rural: Urbanormative portrayals of rural life. Lexington Books.
Harmon, H. L., & Johnson, J. D. (2025). Handbook on rural and remote education. Edward Elgar Publishing.
McNamee, T. C., Willis, J. F. E., & Davis Jr., R. (2025). Towards a critical rural education line of inquiry: Rural spaces as multi-identity contexts. In H. L. Harmon & J. D. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook on rural and remote education (pp. 399—416). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Tentative Manuscript Timeline:
Manuscript or abstract submission: May 3, 2026
(authors may submit a 500-word abstract or a full paper as part of proposal)
First decisions regarding submitted manuscripts/abstracts: May 30, 2026
Final revised manuscript submission deadline: September 30, 2026
Publication: Fall, 2027
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/about/submissions. You must register to make a submission. Please submit to the section entitled Rural Education as Cultural Wealth
Journal Scope and archived volumes are available at: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/about/submissions
Author Guidelines:
- Manuscript length 7000 words (excluding references)
- Only original work that has not been published or submitted elsewhere will be considered
- Referencing style APA 7th edition
Detailed Author Guidelines and Submission Preparation Checklist can be located online: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/about/submissions
