Exploring the educational aspirations of rural youth: An image-based study using participant produced photographs.

摘要

Education is an important variable in forming student aspirations in that it serves to help students become more knowledgeable about the world, more sensitive and understanding of their relationship to it, and more eager to contribute to the community.;The purpose of this visual ethnography study was to explore how students in one rural ninth grade classroom perceive their home, school, and community environments as supporting and/or inhibiting their educational aspirations. The approach allowed students to describe their reality in a tangible visual manner by studying; what students do (behaviors), what they say (reporting on photographs), and what they make, (photographs). Cultural themes emerged from the three environments; school, community and home in which rural ninth grade students spend a majority of their time.;This study was conducted in a rural area in the county of Colorado referred to as Steel County, located approximately ten miles east of the city. The community surrounding Steel County consists of residential areas, produce farms, and small businesses. The rural high school student body is comprised from sub-cities and transfer students from outside areas compiling a fifty mile parameter.;The use of photography provided a unique lens at capturing multi-level relationships that impact rural educational aspirations. Student photographs successfully captured social relationships within the cultural, political-economic, socio-political and spatial context of a rural community, captured within the home, school and community setting.