Schools and Their Communities in Rural Europe: Patterns of Change

This book has shared knowledge of the contexts and challenges faced by rural schools and their communities across Europe. The inclusion of the eastern European countries, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Serbia, informs us of the major and rapid developments in their rural schooling during the post-socialist period. These chapters are juxtaposed with chapters relating recent rural history, policy, and educational research situated in rural contexts in other European countries (Austria, England, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain). Individual authors have presented authentic accounts of their national rural educational circumstances. They attend to national and European definitions and conceptualizations of “rural” and “schools” and make use of educational and structural statistics in their consideration of the wider social, economic, and geographical contexts.