Are there specific reasons which influence the academic performance and the companionship among students from rural areas? What is the difference between the education received by a child living in a village and by one living in a big city? Antonio Bustos Jiménez, researcher at the Department of Didactics and School Organisation of the Universidad de Granada, has tried to answer these questions in his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Los grupos multigrado de Educación Primaria en Andalucía’ (Multilevel Classes in Primary Education in Andalusia). This research, coordinated by Professor Juan Bautista Martínez Rodríguez and Professor Manuel Lorenzo Delgado, is the first in-depth study conducted in Spain on this topic.
The thesis of Antonio Bustos analyses the problem of the scant research related to rural schooling in Andalusia and has sought to fill the void by studying teaching-learning situations in rural areas. The objectives of his study are related to the problems of diversity in the groups/classes in the Spanish Education System that have been demanded for years.
“Thanks to this study, certain myths that existed about multi-level groups (students of different ages grouped in the same class due to the low number of students registered in small population centres ) and rural schools have been overcome” explains the researcher from the UGR. In his thesis, he has used a methodology that combines research conducted among teachers in rural schools in Andalusia for two years and an in-depth study conducted in a Rural Public School (CPR) in the province of Granada.
The case study is virtually unique in the analysis of these kinds of schools, but it has revealed some of the real problems that persist: the low level or lack of teacher training in these centres, deprivation and scarcity of financial and technological resources, isolation from the educational community, certain corporative discrimination, negative prejudices regarding the environment surrounding rural schools, etc..
Higher-quality relationships
The results of the research question the influence of urban school models on the education tradition because of its cultural domination, as “the thesis reveals that students in rural public schools better grades, and that the groups/classes in which learning takes place, as well as their contexts, are settings where coexistence is easier”, states Antonio Bustos. Therefore, this study provides evidence that students from rural areas build their academic identity on the basis of higher-quality interpersonal relationships between the different sectors represented in the school community. The research conducted at the UGR has shown that students from these schools present better academic standards and fewer cases of aggressive behaviour when they enter high school.
According to the Spanish researcher, “rural environments and the conditions offered by the school itself, through a particular organisation and microsocial structure of the students, are the main stimuli for the benefits that the student gains in geographical locations which are often isolated and underprivileged”. This reality affects approximately ten thousand students in Primary Education in Andalusia alone.
Contagious learning
According to Professor Bustos, there are two reasons why rural students achieve better academic results. “On one hand, in rural schools ‘contagious learning’ or learning by mutual impregnation systems have been identified. The presence of students of different ages in the same group/class helps the younger ones feel familiar with the contents related to higher levels and such young students learn in advance through contact with the coursework of older students and through the action of the teacher. Older students also attend the subjects addressed to younger students and therefore review what they learned in previous years”. Furthermore, the student ratio (the number of students per class) is much lower in small villages than in other municipalities (10.6 students per class, against an average of 21.6 at the same education level for the whole region of Andalusia), “which allows teachers to devote more time to students and to provide increasingly personalised attention”.
The conclusions of the doctoral thesis of the researcher of the UGR alert education authorities, the faculties of education, education inspection bodies, and the teachers themselves to the “different fallacies traditionally sustained concerning methodological and organisational practices in these kinds of centres and the ills that still afflict them”. Therefore, Antonio Bustos believes that there is a need to “review the concept of education quality that is applied to rural schools, as the cultural assets in rural environments are so valuable that the inferiority complex and victimisation with which rural schools are often related should be left behind”.
Reference:
Antonio Bustos Jiménez. Department of Didactics and School Organisation of the Universidad de Granada. Phone no: +34 958 243742. Mobil phone: +34 646 011736. E-mail: abustosj@ugr.es
