Karen Eppley

Putting Foucault to Work: Understanding Power in a Rural School

This case study uses the work of Michel Foucault to challenge the normalization of the principals role and to examine the complex power relations of a rural school and community in the midst of a closure/consolidation and subsequent reopening as a charter school. In so doing, we move beyond analysis of best practices and toward a more theoretical approach to understanding the social interactions and subjectivities that constitute one rural school and its leadership. The analysis challenges commonsense assumptions that schools operate in neutral ways and that “best practices” exist outside of social and cultural constructs.

How Agricultural Science Trumps Rural Community in the Discourse of Selected U.S. History Textbooks.

Abstract Using narrative from 6 high school American history textbooks published between 1956 and 2009, this study investigated changes in how textbook authors presented the topics of agricultural science, farming, and community. Although some critical discourse analyses have examined textbooks’ treatment of different population groups (e.g., African Americans, women) or particular historical trends (e.g., industrialization), few have explored textbooks’ treatment of rural cultures and occupations. The critical analysis undertaken in this study revealed that there was a decline over time in the salience of the theme, the promise of science and technology for improving agriculture. It also suggested that a decline in explicit rhetoric in support of industrial agriculture accompanied widespread acceptance of this approach, with its emphasis on monoculture and corporate management, trumping an earlier idyll of the small farm, with its emphasis on nurture, family, and community. Interpretation of these findings rests on the distinction between the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian ideals for the American nation.

“Hey, I Saw Your Grandparents at Walmart”: Teacher Education for Rural Schools and Communities

This is a case study about how teacher education might better prepare rural teacher candidates for rural schools. Parents, teachers, community members, and students associated with a rural school described what is important in the preparation of teachers for todays rural schools. Their goals and wishes for their childrens school and community were complex and contradictory at times, precluding any possibility of a “one best” model for preparing teachers for their schools, but their descriptions suggested direction for programs of teacher preparation. The study concludes with a discussion of priorities for the preparation of teachers for rural schools.

From Ingenious to Ignorant, From Idyllic to Backwards

During the last six decades, rural America has changed in significant ways (Lobao & Meyer, 2001). Whereas many of these changes have been structural in nature—relating to economic changes and demographic shifts—others have been rhetorical, relating to how rural people, places, and contributions are viewed by the nation as a whole (Cook & Beck, 1991; Foster & Hummerl, 1997).