The Forgotten Many

Limited economic resources and geographic challenges can lead rural schools in areas experiencing poverty to deprioritize gifted education. However, for the wellbeing of individual students and their communities, investing in quality rural gifted education is crucial. In this chapter, the authors discuss some of the challenges to providing equitable gifted programming to students in rural areas and present approaches to meeting those challenges (e.g., cluster grouping, mentoring). They then describe a large-scale federally-funded research project, Promoting PLACE in Rural Schools, which demonstrated methods districts can use to bolster gifted education programming. With 14 rural districts in high-poverty areas of the southeastern United States, researchers worked with teachers and school leaders to establish universal screening processes for identifying giftedness using local norms, to teach students the value of a growth mindset in reducing stereotype threat, and to train teachers on using a place-based curriculum to provide more impactful language arts instruction to gifted rural students.

Envisioning the Rural Virtual College Classroom

This chapter addresses intersecting challenges faced by rural college students as online learning becomes more widespread. The chapter begins by discussing the ways in which geography—specifically access to campuses and broadband—can impact rural student inclusivity. It then discusses the multifaceted challenges of rural students, whose disproportionate rates of class disparity and mental health issues can amount to personal crises during the semester. Because the boundaries between personal and academic life are less clear when taking classes from home, students may find that online learning is more difficult than traditional face-to-face classes. Therefore, the chapter offers some suggestions for professors related to simplicity and transparency. It then describes creative, flexible, and empathetic ways of approaching course construction in synchronous online courses. Finally, it offers broader suggestions for decision makers in order to maximize equity and inclusivity moving forward, as synchronous online learning becomes more normalized.

The Paradox of State-Funded Higher Education: Does the Winner Still Take It All?

Contrary to the overall tendency to increase student participation in the financing of higher education, Estonia abolished student tuition fees in 2013. We study the effects of this reform on the students’ access to and progress in higher education, concentrating mostly on the changes in probabilities of rural and remote students being admitted (extensive margin) and graduating within a nominal time (intensive margin). We distinguish between four different outcomes: admission in general, admission to vocational education, admission to high-rank curricula, and graduation within nominal time. We confirm the tendency that a high socioeconomic status increases the probability of being admitted to high-rank curricula and reduces the probability of choosing an applied curriculum, and the 2013 reform did not change that. While the reform weakly improved rural students’ tendency to graduate on time, it diminished the probability that they were admitted to high-rank curricula. So, paradoxically and contrary to the intention of the reform, higher state involvement in higher education financing has not improved the equity in university admission in Estonia in terms of either socioeconomic background or regional disparities. We claim that part of the explanation of that paradox lies in the conditionality of this reform and the combination of a scarce needs-based and a competitive merit-based student support system in Estonia. We see our broader contribution in emphasising the important role of support systems in the future analysis of the potential to improve students’ access.

Finding a Chulu (Way Out): Rural-origin Chinese Students Studying Abroad in South Korea

Based on multi-site research in China and South Korea, this paper examines the motivations for rural-origin Chinese students to study abroad in South Korea and how their overseas experiences are mediated by both internal and international educational hierarchies. Existing literature on transnational student mobility from Asia mainly focuses on students from urban middle-class backgrounds, while little attention has been paid to students from less advantaged backgrounds. Scholars have noted that China's seemingly meritocratic gaokao (national college entrance exam) policy in reality functions to perpetuate the structural marginalization of rural students in its educational system. This research moves beyond the internal migration paradigm by examining how social inequalities associated with the rural/urban divide are reproduced and re-articulated by the intersection of class, gender, place of origin, and time management at the transnational scale.

COVID-19 and online education: Digital inequality and other dilemmas of rural students in accessing online education during the pandemic

It is widely assumed among academicians that the COVID-19 pandemic has negative implications for the education of school students. However, institutions tried to balance that limitation by using online education, and there exist some inequalities among students. Most of the studies conducted during COVID-19 on online education focused on urban school students and their access to online education. In particular, rural school students and their online education remain an open question. Twenty in-depth interviews with rural student respondents determine the fundamental problems and challenge the rural school students’ face in online education during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The study identifies six major problems of rural students: inadequate technology, unacquainted academic atmosphere, digital disconnect, physical well-being, the distractions inherent with the medium, and digital illiteracy. The identified constraints draw inferences to a critical concept in online learning that is digital inequality. Digital inequality refers to the disparity in the access, distribution of technology, information because of various socio-economic and cultural factors. The study also discusses the suggestions of rural students regarding the betterment of online education. The recommendations from the rural students include providing appropriate technological infrastructure, facilitating technical assistance and providing a convenient academic atmosphere. The suggestions are pointing towards the idea of digital inclusion that is vital in online education. Digital inclusion is defined as the ability of individuals or groups of people to access and use information and communication technologies. It is not only about access in a broader sense the opportunities of using innovative hardware and software technology, content and services, getting proper digital literacy pieces of training and the effective use of these services. The findings of the study will help to bridge the disparities in online education. These findings will help the academic community to identify the needs of rural children. It will help build infrastructure for online learning and give extensive support to the school children of rural communities. These findings are also vital for the communication scholars as the disparity in the distribution of information and knowledge is a prime concern for them.

Under the law: The rights of rural students

The difficulties rural school face are well known, and some have turned to the courts for help, joining with urban districts in lawsuits that seek to force states to change how education funds are distributed. Robert Kim reviews litigation in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania that illustrate the challenges these schools face.

THE EFFECTS OF PLACE-BASED PROCESS GENRE MODULE (PBPGM) ON ESSAY WRITING ACHIEVEMENT AMONG FORM FOUR RURAL NATIONAL SECONDARY SCHOOL ESL LEARNERS

Essay writing is known to be a difficult skill among ESL learners, particularly rural students. The present study aims to measure the effects of a Place-Based Process Genre Module (PBPGM) on form four rural ESL learners’ persuasive and expository essay writing from the lens of Sociocultural Theory. A mixed-methods approach adopting a pre-test post-test control group quasi-experimental is employed to determine the significant difference and the Cohen’s d effect size. Purposive random sampling is used, and 30 students in control undergo the conventional teaching, and 30 students in the experimental group undergo a 16-hour intervention of the module. The results of the study indicate that there are significant differences and large effect sizes between the two groups. The experimental group outperforms the control group in both genres. The present study contributes to the field of teaching essay writing to rural ESL learners. The study recommends that process genre approach combined with place-based model texts be incorporated to strengthen and diversify scaffolding for teaching essay writing.

Does Teacher Training Narrow the Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students? Empirical Evidence from CEPS Baseline Data

Based on the baseline data of the China Education Panel Survey, this paper explored the relationship between teacher training and academic performance in urban and rural samples respectively and the impact of teacher training on the urban-rural gap of students' academic performance. The results showed that: firstly, there was a significant urban-rural gap in academic performance, and the gap in high quantiles and language subjects were even larger. Secondly, the results of unconditional quantile regression showed that teacher training could improve the performance of urban students with different academic levels and rural students with intermediate or above academic levels, but it cannot improve the performance of rural students with lower academic levels. In addition, the overall effect of teacher training in urban areas is significantly higher than that in rural areas. Thirdly, different quantiles of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found that the endowment effect and the coefficient effect of teacher training were the important causes of the urban-rural performance gap, but the relative sizes of the two were different according to the different grades and different quantiles of performance distribution. Therefore, to increase the training opportunities and improve the training quality of rural teachers as well as enhance the resource conversion rate of rural students are of great practical significance for narrowing the urban-rural performance gap.

Sugar Content of Market Beverages and Children’s Sugar Intake from Beverages in Beijing, China

(1) Background: This study aims to find the sugar content of market beverages and estimate the sugar intake from beverages among students in Beijing. (2) Methods: Using snapshotting, we collected the sugar content of beverages through their packages or nutrition labels. Combined with the statistic of student beverage consumption, we estimated students’ sugar intake. (3) Results: The median sugar content of total beverages was 9.0 g/100 mL, among which the fruits/vegetable juices and beverages had the highest sugar content (10.0 g/100 mL). Sugar content in most beverages in Beijing was generally higher than the recommendations, and fruit/vegetable juices and beverages exceeded the most. The median of sugar intake from beverages among students was 5.3 g/d, and the main sources were fruit/vegetable juices and beverages, protein beverages and carbonated beverages. Sugar intake from beverages differed according to gender, age and living area. Higher sugar intake was found among boys, older students and rural students. (4) Conclusions: Sugar content in market beverages in Beijing were high. Gender, age and residence were the influencing factors of sugar intake. Targeted measures should be taken to decrease the sugar content in beverages, especially the fruit/vegetable juices and beverages and the sugar intake among students.