Guest editorial.

Anderson, Michelle ; Wildy, Helen

Small schools have always been a vital part of the educational landscape of many countries. For Australia, even today, as many as one-quarter of the nation's schools can be classified as small schools. That Australia has such a proportion of small schools is not surprising: Australia is a large country, comparable in area to China or the USA. The majority of its small population clings to the cool eastern shore line, leaving vast tracts of sparsely peopled countryside. Although not as sparsely populated as countries like Canada (with 3.6 people per square kilometre) and Russia (8.4 people per square kilometre), Norway and Finland have low population densities (16 and 17 people per square kilometre respectively). Most of these countries' small schools are found in small, isolated, rural or remote locations, and perhaps not surprisingly they share common features, benefits and challenges.

This Special Issue brings together recent empirical studies of small schools in Australia, Norway, Finland, England and South Africa. The Special Issue originated from a research and development project involving leaders of five Australian small schools. The project was part of the Australian Council for Educational Research's Educational Dialogue Series, culminating in the publication of the book A Collective Act: Leading a Small School (Anderson et al., 2010) and a national forum titled 'Small Schools, Big Issues' at the University of Western Australia in May 2010. Some of the studies reported in this Special Issue informed an international symposium at the European Council for Educational Research (ECER) held in Helsinki in August 2010. Other studies reported here will be the focus of the Berlin ECER symposium in September 2011.

What counts as 'small' depends on the context. For example, Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund's Finnish case study village school has 12 students, although Finnish schools with fewer than 50 students are considered an 'endangered species'. The Finmark area of Norway, the site of the research by Sidsel Germeten, is characterised by similarly small schools. The two schools characterised as small by Carl Bagley and his colleague Sam Hillyard have 164 students and 50 students respectively. John Halsey reports that small schools are variably defined across the jurisdictions of Australia, with the upper limit ranging from fewer than 100 students to 200 students. The small South African schools in the study of women principals conducted by Jacky Lumby and Cristina Azaola have 200 or fewer students.

The research approaches adopted by the authors of the papers in this Special Issue are similarly varied, although all seven studies involve qualitative data. Bagley and Hillyard, both sociologists, generated rich enthnographic data about the social, cultural and political landscapes of their two village schools to compare the role and place of the village school in two contrasting English rural settings. Researchers Lumby and Azaola investigate gender in seven small schools in the provinces of Gauteng and the North West of South Africa, to find out the extent to which women principals attempt to neutralise gender or to 'reshape its boundaries'. Germeten from Norway, Anderson and White, Clarke and Wildy from Australia, and Karlberg-Granlund from Finland adopted the case study approach for their empirical research in their respective countries. Halsey, another Australian researcher, used an online survey to gather qualitative data from nearly 700 school principals of rural schools about their understanding of their preparation for the leadership roles they have taken.

This Special Issue begins with John Halsey's discussion of the significance of small schools in Australia and the challenges they face in a time of increased accountabilities and responsibilities. Sidsel Germeten examines small school principals' 'lonely' experiences of finding their way through the implementation of Norway's new national curriculum. Support for school improvement is the theme of the third article: Simon Clarke and Helen Wildy suggest ways for strengthening the role of the district. Carl Bagley and Sam Hillyard challenge the notion of rural. With the concept of the 'rural plural' they distinguish the first rural, the materialist spatial rural, from the second rural, the rural as a 'category of thought' as they contrast two village schools in terms of their material heart, their political heart and their cultural heart. Michelle Anderson and Simone White examine the theme of social capital and the resourcing of small community change, arguing that small school leaders need to put social capital to work through education-driven social entrepreneurism, not only for the revival of small school communities but also for their survival. The threat of closure underpins the contexts of the last two articles of this Special Issue. How teachers cope in schools under threat of closure is the subject of the study conducted by Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund in Finland. Finally Jacky Lumby and Cristina Azaola consider the varied context and experience of women principals in small South African schools.

The study of small schools is a rich and diverse site, as evidenced by the range of perspectives and international contexts presented by the articles of this Special Issue. As joint editors, we applaud the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Education for its commitment to supporting research in this important part of the educational landscape, both locally and internationally.

Michelle Anderson and Helen Wildy

Guest Editors

Anderson, M., Davis, M., Douglas, P., Lloyd, D., Niven, B., & Thiele, H. (2010). A collective act: Leading a small school. Educational Dialogue Series. Melbourne: ACER Press.