Make My Day, Shoot a Teacher: Tactics of inclusion and exclusion, and the contestation of community in a rural school-community conflict

Far from being the harmonious and homogenous communities of popular imagination, rural communities often are characterised by stark differences in class-situated values over education philosophy and financing. These differences can produce contentious political environments, vastly complexifying local decision-making, including school district policy-making, budgeting, and teacher contract negotiations. Through an exemplar case study, we examine one such conflict and how a hegemonic narrative was constructed by local actors to consolidate political power using crafted constructions of 'other' and competing narratives of community and community membership. This paper explores 'insider-outsider' identity constructions arising out of community-school conflict, and the ways in which rural teachers, working from the position of 'outsider', navigated these constructions.