Toward (from and for) a critical rural education line of inquiry relating to points of transition between cultural domination and community empowerment in rural schools

Schools in rural places are socially, culturally, politically and intellectually in the middle of a choreography of competing interests, the outcomes of which are never easily predictable, and research has to make sense of these complex relations. This is the feature explored in the present chapter. Using meta-ethnography of the research products from recent individual ethnographic studies, it concerns how metro-centricity in relation to the taught curriculum not only risks marginalising local values in rural communities and rural schools but also how regional, national and even international interests have become embedded in rural places to maintain urban hegemony and disguise labour and resource exploitation. A conclusion is therefore that although there is a belief in the community value of rural schools and curriculum interactions in them, the foundations on which to base these beliefs appear to be rather loose.