Rural school in the sociocultural modernization of education: Post-classical grounds for conceptualization

The sociocultural modernization of education determines an active scientific discussion about the concepts of the rural school and sustainable models of its existence in the post-industrial era. In this regard, the question of finding and developing a methodological toolkit relevant to changing conditions for studying educational institutions located in rural areas becomes of urgent relevance. The aim of the study was to identify the theoretical grounds for the conceptualization of a modern rural school that develops in the context of sociocultural modernization of education. Methodologically, the study is based on the principle of interdisciplinarity. It includes several levels, from fundamental to applied, and an extensive list of scientific methods. Ontological, spatial, sociocultural and anthropological approaches used at the fundamental level act as contextual and allow explicating the specifics of sociocultural factors within which the rural school is transforming today. Pedagogical approaches are aimed at identifying the characteristics of educational systems operating in rural areas in the modes of functioning and innovative development. As a result of the analysis of a wide corpus of pedagogical works of the 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries, three research groups (based on approaches and tools of classical, non-classical and post-classical types) were identified. The authors demonstrate that, in the context of challenges of an information and communication digital society, a rural school should be conceptualized and modeled based on a post-classical research methodology, which is the most sensitive to social change. A key thesis is the statement that a rural school is a complex organized educational system capable of self-organization and self-regulation in a “hybrid” (real/virtual) ontology. Therefore, when elaborating a multi-level structure of the model of a rural school that develops in the context of sociocultural modernization, it is necessary to take into account its autopoeticity, polyfunctionality, openness, rurality as continuity and adaptability to the local culture of a particular rural society, convergence. The rural school model has a complex multi-level structure and includes different elements: the context component is the rural school as a social institution and a system-forming element of rural life support, the research focus component is the network educational infrastructure, the conceptual and organizational structure of rural education and staffing. Such a combination of integral components makes it possible to effectively form modern professional ideas of teachers, managerial and pedagogical teams as management bodies for network communications, design and implementation of network educational programs.

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