Reports and Publications
UMaine and its partners across the region are producing important work on rural education that is meeting the needs of educators, students and families across New England. The National Rural Education Association’s 2022-2027 Rural Education Research Agenda, released in August of 2022, identifies six areas of research that rural educators across the nation have identified as critical to their students’ future success. We have organized faculty research into these six categories for easy reference.
Rural education workforce development
- Working across time and space: Developing a framework for teacher leadership throughout a teaching career
Rebecca Buchanan, Tammy Mills & Evan Mooney - Challenges with teacher retention and staffing shortages in Maine School Districts
Janet Fairman, Tammy Mills, Patricia Lech - Maine Principal Perceptions of Beginning Teacher Preparation
Janet Fairman, Tammy Mills, Patricia Lech, Amy Johnson - School leadership development programs in Maine: Building statewide capacity and addressing challenges
Janet Fairman, Ian Mette, Maria Frankland
Providing culturally responsive rural education
- Negotiating Culturally Responsive Leadership in Remote Rural Settings
Maria Frankland, Andrea Mercado, Catharine Biddle - Whiteness in Rural Education
Kathleen Gillon - Materiality, Affect, and Diverse Educational Settings: A Collaborative Inquiry Between Urban and Rural Teacher Educators
Adrian Matrin, Tammy Mills - (De)centering Whiteness at Summit High: Reflections of a racialized rural United States
Ian Mette - Developing equitable school leaders in a predominantly white rural educational leadership program in the US
Ian Mette - Poverty, Privilege and Political Dynamics within rural school reform: Unraveling educational leadership in invisible America
Ian Mette, Catharine Biddle, Sarah Mackenzie, Kathy Harris-Smedberg
School climate and mental health needs of rural students, teachers and families
- Letting students lead the way
Catharine Biddle, Lyn Mikel Brown, Mark Tappan - Meeting students where they are: Trauma-informed approaches in rural schools
Maria Frankland
Cultivating meaningful partnerships and community relationships
- Partnering with schools for community development: Power imbalances in rural community collaboratives addressing childhood adversity
Catharine Biddle, Ian Mette, Andrea Mercado - Addressing rural, wicked problems through collaboration
Catharine Biddle, Ian Mette, Lyn Mikel Brown, Mark Tappan, Brittany Ray and Sarah Strickland - Parochialism or pragmatic resistance?: The role of community-engaged leadership, activist scholarship, and vulnerable rural ecologies within school reform
Ian Mette, Catharine Biddle, Mark Congdon, Andrea Mercado
Rural college attendance, persistence and post-secondary training
- Writing “rural”: Critical perspectives on rural students and the college-going experience
Kathleen Gillon
Rural education policy and funding
- Turnaround reform efforts in a rural context: How community and culture can impart change
Ian Mette - School turnaround: A rural reflection of reform on the reservation and lessons for implementation
Ian Mette