Education and Negotiated Reality: Complexities Facing Rural Youth in the 1990s

The educational decisions of rural youth are examined using data from two longitudinal surveys. One has questionnaire data gathered in 1992 and 1996, from about 2000 high school graduates in Victoria, Australia. The second studied a cohort of over 1200 youths (born in 1971) in urban and rural Canada, surveyed in 1989 and 1994. Findings show rural/urban differences in educational expectations and outcomes. The two data sets also document the complexities of youth transitions as they combine school and work, leave the parental home, undertake marriage and/or parenting, and experience unemployment. The analysis challenges the notion of the transitions from youth to adulthood as linear, preset or predictable. Rather these transitions are experienced by the young people as complex, changeable and negotiated—and as different for many rural as compared to urban youth. Suggestions for research and for educational policy are given.