As it is seen in the comprehensively discriminatory rural society, the issue of education in the rural area can be solved by not only rural schools but also the rural community; it will be worked out by means of the cooperation between rural schools a...
As it is seen in the comprehensively discriminatory rural society, the issue of education in the rural area can be solved by not only rural schools but also the rural community; it will be worked out by means of the cooperation between rural schools and the community. It is well demonstrated that various activities of the educational community are performed at the area, in which the problems of rural education are revealed.
The study is focused on how educational community in the rural area is developed and what it means, through the case studies of the community by the Chungnam Education Research Institute (the 'CERI'), a good example of how well local residents cooperate with teachers and professors with interest in rural education at closed rural schools.
Reasons why the CERI was to be studied are as follows: the CERI has established the communication channels between CERI members and local residents during the process of the CERI activities of rural educational community, which start with humble community studying room to be advanced to the local network. Furthermore, it is thought to provide a key to the problem of rural education, for it decides and operates projects on basis of local understanding and needs.
Participation study is chosen, in that the author of this paper has participated in the planning, management, consultation, education and evaluation of CERI's educational and cultural community in the rural area since its inception. The paper is focused on how the rural educational community has evolved in such aspects as its understanding of the local community, assessment of its activities, dealing with problems raised in the process of participation. It also highlights the features of rural educational community and local network formed during the problem-solving process.
With the rural society, rural educational community status and the concept and characteristics of rural educational community as the background, the author analyzed the features of rural educational community in two parts: its development and field.
Hence, soundness and consistency of the rural educational community are sustained depending on the most important factors in participating in the rural educational community: participants' self-determination, how well individual participants understand and agree on community activities, whether they acknowledge community activities as their own.
The paper demonstrates with the CERI rural educational community activities that rural educational community activities should not only understand the rural area and meet its needs, have relation with the life of local residents, support children's caring and schooling, but also contribute on educational enhancement of local residents and connect schools and the local community to communicate with each other.