Rural Rivers Deep in my Veins

Currere as Care

Abstract

Rural knowledges and rural education live far beyond what happens in rural schools. How I live and how I research is seated in what it was to be raised in a rural context. Corbett (2013) engages the rural; “we might understand the rural as a space of intersections and tensions, of people and place, of people and people, of place and space, and so forth. Rurality, as I understand it, is about connections and stewardship (p. 2) and, as I understand it, care.” A substantial amount of rural educational research problematizes rural communities, with the pretense that there is something wrong with rural as compared to urban (Howley & Howley, 2014). To be clear, I am inspired by much that exists in rural educational research (Donehower et al., 2007; Rautio & Lanas, 2013; Shaft & Jackson, 2010; White & Corbett, 2013). However, much more research needs to engage with rural without a perspective that paints rural as deficient. Rather than metrocentric ideas about education in a rural space, I seek to be a researcher in the rural as part of the place, space and relations that inhere. In a vein of respect for rural, I pursue its inherent complexity. In this piece I utilize currere, as an expression of care in order to engage an ethic of care (Noddings, 2013) in research, as researcher. I use currere to locate myself in order to reveal the relations integral to living and learning, as a rural person.