Threading the Needle: Rural Educational Leadership at a Time of Sociopolitical Crises and Growing Spatial Polarisation

Around the world, political polarisation has increasingly developed spatial dimensions as political leaders espousing nationalistic, anti-democratic positions rally bases of support across rural areas.U.S. rural educational leadershipwas already facing pronounced challenges amidst ongoing rural economic dislocation, racialized conflict, and the COVID-19 pandemic, but spatialised political divisions have exacerbated and created new dilemmas. In the context of increasing epistemological crises, educational challenges have been weaponised, spurred by conflicts around critical social issues, and coupled with the spread of misinformation and distrust in expert knowledge. These dynamics have drawn rural educational leaders into heated local policy debates, functioning as stand-ins for larger (inter)national divisions. In this chapter, we examine the evolving circumstances of rural educational leaders, specifically in the context of the movements such as Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and growing political polarisation. We investigate what these circumstances mean for leadership at a time in which nearly all education policy decisions come with an assumed political stance and when decisions can have life-or-death consequences for individuals served by rural schools.