Partnership-based approaches in rural education research

This chapter represents multiple perspectives of collaboration suggested by conference participants of the Connect-Inform-Advance: 2013 Conference on Rural Education Research (C-I-A), sponsored by the National Center for Research on Rural Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Conference participants endorsed effective partnership-based approaches in rural education research including multiple perspectives of rural education research, practice, policy and community. The consensus from C-I-A conference participants was that partnership-based approaches provide a unique and valuable approach to conducting the complete cycle of rural education research (e.g., development, conduction and dissemination). Participant-authors of this chapter represent key stakeholder groups identified by conference participants of rural education research, practice, policy and community. A primary data source included participant-authors’ shared experiences in rural education research, perspectives on developing, maintaining partnerships, and suggestions for future directions. Another source comes from findings related to multiple perspective partnerships in rural educational research emerging from a qualitative analysis of participant responses in the roundtable discussions conducted during the C-I-A conference (findings presented in Chapter " Multidisciplinary Perspectives to Advance Rural Education Research” of this book). A third source is literature relevant to partnership-based approaches to rural education research. Participant-authors’ perspectives, conference participants’ consensus and relevant literature were triangulated in identifying the themes presented in this chapter.