Sharon, John, Dennis, & Michael,

I am forwarding you some information that I believe AERA Rural SIG members will be interested in. In the upcoming NREA Conference, the Research Symposium portion of this conference will be hosting 2 sessions to design and implement two research projects important to rural education. I hope that you might disseminate this information to AERA Rural SIG members—and encourage their participation in the NREA Research Symposium, to be held October 15-17 in Branson, Missouri. Please see the attachments describing the proposed research topics and the sessions planned to launch cross-state teams to design and carry out this research. This is a great opportunity for those interested in rural education research to come together to carry out important and needed educational research. As well, this forum provides a chance for doctoral students and junior faculty to become involved in a national research project.

For further information about the NREA Conference and Research Symposium, please go to the NREA website, http://www.nrea.net/

Thanks so much for getting this information out. I hope to see you and other AERA members at the conference.

Patti

Patti L. Chance, Ph. D.
Chair and Professor
Department of Educational Leadership
San Diego State University

Attachment:

Connecting Research to Practice

In this session we are inviting practitioners and researchers to join in a discussion about identifying important research questions regarding rural schools, centered on two topics relevant to rural school teachers and administrators: (1) Leadership Development in Rural Schools and (2) Personnel Recruitment, Retention, and Development in Rural Schools.

The purpose of this session is to engage practitioners and researchers in a dialogue to establish a research project to be carried out in the following year regarding each of these topics. The expected outcome of this session is to identify salient questions regarding each of these topics. The session will begin with preliminary questions about these topics. Participants will be asked to help refine essential questions in the expectation of carrying out such research.

If you have interest in either of these topics, either as a researcher or practitioner, we encourage you to attend. Representatives from the U. S. Department of Education and the National Center for Research on Rural Education (R2Ed) will participate in the dialogue associated with this session.

In a follow-up session, researchers, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Research on Rural Education, will develop a plan for cross-state collaboration in carrying out these research projects in the following year.

Facilitators: Hobart Harmon and Patti Chance

Follow-up Session: Getting Started on the Work—Research to Practice

In this follow-up session, researchers interested in developing and participating in a research study based on one of two topics (Leadership Development in Rural Schools, or Personnel Recruitment, Retention, and Development in Rural Schools) will collaborate to define a research study related to one of these topics.

The expected outcome of this session is to compose a research team for each topic, whose members will commit to developing and implementing the tentatively designed study. Team members will continue collaboration following the conference through virtual tools and participate in a multi-state collaborative research project as initiated in this session. Staff of the National Center for Research on Rural Education will contribute to this session by providing information regarding the Center’s possible support role in assisting each research team. Representatives from the U.S. Department of Education will participate in the discussions surrounding the research design for each study.

Facilitators: Patti Chance (Leadership Development in Rural Schools) & Hobart Harmon (Personnel Recruitment, Retention, and Development in Rural Schools)

Tags: NREA, AERA, small schools, rural, education

Labels: AERA, education, NREA, rural, small schools