Examining the Challenges to Teaching and Leading Rural Education in an Elite Urban University Through the Lenses of a Theory of Recognition

This chapter offers the case for thinking about recognition in rural education leadership. To illustrate the case for a theory of recognition in rural education, I focus on Nancy Fraser’s “perspectival dualism” approach and Axel Honneth’s “normative monism”. Drawing on these two theoretical positions, I first illustrate the social misrecognition experienced by leading international scholars in the field of rural education, and, secondly, patterns of institutional cultural disrespect to rural teaching using a research project conducted with urban pre-service teachers in a metropolitan university. Against these two examples of withheld recognition, I offer four approaches to leadership in rural education based on time, failure, sociality, and generations. I argue that these approaches can illuminate the ways that rural education researchers can lead and carve a space for their work, advance the research field, and the interests of rural schooling, in a time and space of increasing societal urbanisation. Ultimately, I contend that the cultural status of rural education research and teaching, vis a vis their urban counterparts, demands of those involved in this field to lead even in the face of misrecognition and social disrespect.