Schafft Co-Edits Book on Rural Education

by Joe Savrock (September 2009)

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Kai A. Schafft, assistant professor of educational leadership in Penn State’s College of Education and faculty affiliate in rural sociology, is co-editor of a new book that examines current issues about education in rural areas.

Schafft worked with Alecia Youngblood Jackson, associate professor at Appalachian State University, to produce Rural Education for the Twenty-First Century: Identity, Place, and Community in a Globalizing World. The book, published by The Penn State Press, is part of the publisher’s Rural Studies Series.

The book explores the practices that offer both problems and possibilities for the futures of rural schools and communities, both in the United States and abroad. The face of rural communities is being radically transformed by the economic effects of multinational free-trade agreements, the proliferation of mass media and information technology, and educational reforms such as No Child Left Behind. These changes have presented new opportunities, as well as new challenges, for people living in rural areas.

Rural Education for the Twenty-First Century consists of 15 chapters. Three of the chapters were contributed by faculty members of Penn State’s College of Education—Susan Faircloth, John Tippecconic, and Associate Dean Jacqueline Edmondson.

Schafft is director of the College's Center on Rural Education and Communities and serves as editor of the Journal of Research in Rural Education. His research explores the relationship between social inequality, spatial inequality, and rural development. His work includes the study of housing insecurity and chronic residential mobility among poor households.