Research Questions
What experiences do rural student writers have in open-admissions contexts as they transition to college writing?
What are the strengths of college writers who live in or come from rural communities?
What do writing instructors in open-admissions writing programs identify as strengths and challenges of rural student writers adapting to college literacy expectations?
Our intention is to draw from qualitative data and artifacts of student learning to develop a portrait of rural students in college, as well as to surface any issues or barriers that might emerge through this research that can inform policy or practice for retaining rural students to college.
Scholarship and research on rural communities, and specifically, literacy and writing within rural spaces is well-developed. Within our field of writing studies, there are several edited collections that bring together perspectives about rural literacies. For example, Donehower, Hogg, and Schell (2007 and 2012) have explored rural rhetorics through case studies about wind power advocacy, gender and literacy labor in rural communities, agricultural activism, environmental sustainability in rural areas, among other issues. The edited collection "Queering the Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies" notes that "that “rural” is first and foremost a name we give to an astoundingly complex assemblage of people, places, and positionalities" (8). We draw from the diverse array of work in rhetoric, literacy, and writing studies to position our research questions.
At the same time, the fields of sociology, demography, economics, public policy, and cultural studies have investigated efforts to recruit and retain rural students to college (Barrett, et al 2023); initiatives that aim to create college access pathways for rural students (Blake, 2024); the significant role that rural colleges play in their local communities (AARC 2021); declines in rural student college-going behaviors (Marcus 2020); and critical assessments of the shared priorities of rural and urban areas.
Within our own field of writing studies, this project will build from the theoretical, historical, and rhetorical knowledge within the field to provide a qualitative picture of the experiences of first-year college students from rural areas. In particular, we hope to gain generalizable knowledge about how rural students in access institutions experience college and adapt as college writers, with particular attention to situating our findings within institutional data, regional data, and national research on educational equity including educational attainment in rural areas.