Rural in a Different Caye: Listening to Early School Leavers About the Importance of Place

Educational research in small, "developing" nation-states is primarily driven by the neoliberal imperatives of international development agencies that require both measurable outcomes and favor quantitative research. With equity and access as primary goals, the focus of most research is limited to assessing whether poorer populations and rural communities are participating in the educational system and "catching up" academically. Although over half of Belize's population life in rural areas (World Bank, 2015), research agendas are similar to metropolitan-based scholarship elsewhere which often ignores the relationship of specific rural places to education (Howley & Howley, 2014). While equity and access are both justifiable and worthwhile goals for education everywhere, educational research and policy, albeit sometimes unintentionally, can result in silencing the people whom schools serve and rendering the places in which schools exist invisible.