Recruiting Rural Schools for Education Research: Challenges and Strategies
One third of all schools in the United States are located in rural areas, sharing characteristics that affect the way education is delivered. These include smaller average class sizes, geographic isolation, and reduced access to professional development f
- PDF / 174,826 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 82 Downloads / 184 Views
Abstract One third of all schools in the United States are located in rural areas, sharing characteristics that affect the way education is delivered. These include smaller average class sizes, geographic isolation, and reduced access to professional development for teachers. Despite their numbers, rural schools have historically been underrepresented in education research, particularly in rigorous studies. This chapter examines the recruitment of rural schools for education research, including an approach used to recruit Idaho schools for a cluster randomized trial. The authors describe how their approach addressed many of the unique features of rural schools. The focus on understanding local context, establishing personal connections, and offering high-quality professional development aligned with regional needs allowed the study team to recruit a sample that reflected the proportion of rural schools in the state. This proved to be an effective approach, although more expensive and time-consuming than recruitment efforts in urban and suburban settings. The authors conclude by discussing some considerations for researchers, as well as for funding agencies that wish to include rural school perspectives in future education research.
Keywords Rural schools Randomized trial Retention Education research funding
Research design Recruitment
E. Autio (&) 7248 SE Grant Street, Portland, OR 97215, USA e-mail: [email protected] E. Autio T. Deussen Education Northwest, 101 SW Main Street, Ste 500, Portland, OR 97204, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 G.C. Nugent et al. (eds.), Rural Education Research in the United States, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42940-3_5
77
78
E. Autio and T. Deussen
1 Introduction One third (33 %) of all schools in the United States are located in rural areas; together, these schools serve a quarter (25 %) of the nation’s students (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2013). Although rural schools share many similarities with schools in other geographic settings, they also have unique characteristics that may affect the implementation and impact of educational programs and interventions. Rural schools have historically been underrepresented in educational research, particularly in high-quality experimental or quasi-experimental studies (Arnold et al. 2005). For example, about 6 % of all grants and contracts awarded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (IES) between 2002 and 2014 included the keyword “rural,” versus 21 % with the keywords “urban” or “suburban” (U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences 2015). This pattern appears to be slowly changing; a new group of rigorous studies, such as those conducted by the co-authors of this book, are examining program implementation and outcomes in the rural context. Still, there is a paucity of rigorous, extant studies to inform instructional practice and policy in rural schools. As e
Data Loading...
