Conference Agenda

The research project arises from the new educational needs that emanate from what is called "knowmadic society" (Cobo, 2016), observing that the limits of formal education, as they have been understood until now, are being crossed by new forms of learning, communication and relationship. Due in large part to the technological and digital revolution of the last 15 years, access to information and knowledge goes beyond any previous institutional approach. Perspectives such as ubiquitous learning teach us that learning can be done at any time and any place and in multiple ways, becoming relevant when it comes to projecting how educational systems should be focused today.

Educational institutions have been devoid of mechanisms to integrate these demands, partly due to the distancing of the classic school formats with respect to the new ecologies of learning (Martínez and Fernández, 2018; Castel, 2014) and the skills required by the current global society. A school that seems incapable both of opening its doors to new realities and scenarios of relationships and communication, and of generating pedagogies and learning practices that are attractive, stimulating, challenging, provocative and/or creative for students (Alliaud and Antelo, 2009; Acaso, Manzanera and Piscitelli, 2015).

In this framework of "augmented society" and "multiple literacies" a curricular development takes place that forces us to rethink the teaching and work systems in the educational system. This is especially relevant at the level of secondary education where the borders of conventional cultural and social systems are constantly being overwhelmed by new realities. Students at this educational level have a specific profile (complex due to the stage of development they are in) and resources closely linked to the knowmadic society, in which a distance is found in a teaching model based mainly on the one-way transmission of knowledge. This, in interaction with families, teachers and other educational agents, generates a world of conflicts of various kinds: curricular, social, attitudinal and expectations from a personal and collective perspective.

That is why we recover the contributions on disruptive pedagogical practices (Christensen, Raynor and McDonnald, 2016), which have analyzed this fact and show that there is a need to rethink and modify from a connectivity approach those restrictions that end up converting formal educational institutions into systems of standardization, fragmentation and homogenization of experience and knowledge. The challenge is to ensure that educational systems, through their organizations understand knowledge as something distributed in a network and interdependent (Siemens, 2005) and use new heterodox formats and supports based on multi-sensory didactics and an ethic for diversity (Bilbeny, 2002).

Therefore, new experiences are required in formal educational organizations that move towards this new social reality, in which personal experience, new technologies and other narratives are linked as resources that promote other forms of training to incorporate them into school processes and review the ways in which learning occurs in the formal education environment.

This study is located on experiences of an innovative, transformative and emerging nature that are being developed in secondary education centers. We are interested in mapping the fundamental elements that are present in the development of these experiences from the perspective of comprehensive, ubiquitous, and expanded pedagogies that connect and integrate places, people, and times for learning.

We are immersed in two secondary schools,in this paper we are going to present the case of Monte Alto, a middle school in a rural context and with a Learning Community experience. The research is being carried out through the analysis of the experiences of the different school agents, resorting to participatory and narrative methodologies that allow us a respectful, hermeneutic, non-invasive, negotiated and openly collaborative approach.

Small rural schools have been commended across many countries for offering advantageous educational features, briefly summarised as maintaining community links; providing a family ethos; responding effectively to the individual needs of pupils and being conveniently located (Anderson, 2010). At the same time, their continued existence is questioned regarding their contributions to rural settings and their provision is often contested in the face of powerful arguments for consolidation and merger of small establishments on grounds of their questionable efficiency and quality (Roberts, 2022). While outward facing aspects of the small rural school have been extensively documented, in a range of contexts, their internal practices, including teaching and learning, that contribute to the abovementioned advantageous features, e.g. meeting the needs of pupils, have been less so. Against this backdrop, the foundational question posed by Hargreaves (2009) remains: How can, or do, teachers capitalise on the inherent advantages of the small and rural schools, or having small and/or multi-age classes? This draws attention to issues such as the recruitment of pre-service teachers for these small establishments that can fall outside of anticipated norms in terms of organisation and practices. The contribution of this paper is a report on small rural schools that have close ties with the Church of England (CoE).

In the centuries leading up to state provision of secular welfare across the UK, in each rural or urban settlement, the parish offered basic education and moral guidance to local peoples. Owing to this legacy, the CoE remains closely linked with rural schools, many of which are very small, having fewer than 110 pupils (very small rural n= 1264) (CoE, 2018). Budgetary constraints reflecting national school funding that operates on a per-pupil basis and its concomitant challenges e.g. staffing, have motivated the CoE to engage in alliances to enhance small schools. The Rural Teacher Partnership (Teach First, n.d.) is a collaboration established in England between the CoE, Teach First and Chartered College of Teachers that supports pre-service teachers on clinical placement, acknowledging their work in small classes and/or one class schools. While the stated aim of the CoE initiative is to build a fair education for all pupils in rural communities, significant challenges can stand in the way of the benefits that potentially emerge from such collaborations. We investigate the nature of the environment within small schools in order to further our understanding of their inherent advantages and to shed light on approaches adopted towards specific practices such as teaching in multi-grade classes and/or in a school with one class.

In this study, we look further into the organization of Vocational education and training (VET) in a rural district of Norway. In Norway, the concept rural indicates peripheral areas consisting of at least one municipality that is eligible for national aid concerning transport, investment, and adjusted payroll taxes. In Norway collaboration to uphold VET is diverse and interlinked in a continually ongoing organizing (Czarniawska, 2014). The term “organizing” indicate the intertwined work that the school, training agency, and companies and institutions of a rural community conduct (Czarniawska, 2014; Weick et al., 2005). To study organizing, we utilize the understanding of action net. Action is a motion or happening to which an intention can be ascribed by relating an event to the social order in which it occurs (Harré, 1982). Organizing is characterized by interconnected cycles and is understood as causal loops rather than linear chains of cause and effect. In practice, the organizing of VET moves from one place to another and happens in several places simultaneously. As loosely coupled elements, the different actors who carry out organizing have various rationalities for engaging in the process. Loosely coupled organizing provides flexibility that is vital for survival; thus, it is necessary to acknowledge the existence of both rationality and indeterminacy when examining this organizing (Czarniawska, 2004). In general, VET is connected to a nation's policy; thus, its context differs as do the social systems in which the school are embedded. Studies have pointed out that to understand how to promote diversity and opportunities in VET, research should not only examine individual-level hindrances but also look at how institutions cooperate and participate to create possibilities for young people (Angus et al., 2011; Milmeister et al., 2022). VET is valued differently in Europe depending on the country. Nordic countries have a more positive outlook of VET, while more southern countries give it decreased value (Cedefop, 2017; Milmeister et al., 2022) Albeit a positive outlook of VET in the Nordic countries, an urban-rural debate on settlement indicates there is an uneven balance of political power between the country's center and its periphery (Cedefop, 2017; Milmeister et al., 2022). Rural policy of education is characterized by a lack of priority regarding the organizing of local schools and their contribution to the social and cultural variety of a democratic welfare state (Kvalsund, 2019; Knutas; 2017). Internationally, political incentives often neglect rural education due to higher infrastructure costs and politically preferred budget cuts, which indicates that rural families have limited choice of schools and educational programs compared to urban families (Weiss & Heinz-Fischer, 2022). International research on rural schools’ reports that a locally situated education is central to the community and its development process as education, contributes to the local culture and welfare (Gristy & Hargreaves, 2020). A school contributes to economic and social development and VET in a rural area has the potential to develop mutually beneficial partnerships between schools, local businesses, and regional industries (Beach et al., 2019). In rural areas, if no school is available in the nearby area, the transfer to a post-compulsory school has a cultural, social and material impact on youngsters' life chances and choice of course (Corbett & Forsey, 2017; Rosvall, 2022). Not only are the vulnerable young ones mostly affected. Diversity as a social and cultural variety of a democratic welfare state is linked to the possibility of upholding economic stability which in turn supports the reconstruction of a community (Beach et.al. 2019). We ask: In what ways is diversity addressed and organized in VET to uphold the reconstruction of a rural community.