Rural cultural wealth: dismantling deficit ideologies of rurality

Purpose Rural education research has historically been cast in a deficit lens, with rural places characterized by their problems or shortcomings, as if the way of understanding rural itself is to compare it to nonrural locales. These intransigent and narrow perceptions of rurality hinders recognition of the assets and possibilities of rural places. The purpose of this paper is to apply community-empowering, transgressive knowledge to analyses of rural communities to advance rural education research and practice. Design/methodology/approach In this conceptual paper, the authors propose an asset-based, conceptual framework to ground rural research and education practices: rural cultural wealth. Findings The authors describe and explore the concept of rural cultural wealth within the context of education. Furthermore, the authors discuss the dynamics of rurality and propose four constructs that comprise the rural cultural wealth framework, rural resourcefulness, rural ingenuity, rural familism and rural community unity, and consider implications for future research and practice. Originality/value The goal of this paper is to advance a rural cultural wealth framework aimed to interrupt social reproduction of educational inequities that impact rural students.