Future second/foreign language (L2) self-guides are considered essential components of L2 learners' motivation across the world. This article investigates the future L2 selves of English language learners from rural, remote and less developed regions of Punjab, Pakistan. Using D & ouml;rnyei's L2 Motivational Self System (2009) as a conceptual framework, the research focused on diverse personal/individual, collective, affective and contextual factors that may contribute to the 'Future L2 Selves' and 'Learning Experiences' of English language learners. A structured questionnaire was administered to approximately 500 undergraduate students across public-sector colleges in these remote areas. Regression analysis findings show 'Intended Learning Efforts,' 'International Posture,' and 'National Interest' as the most substantial factors that predict the ideal L2 selves of the learners. In contrast, 'Instrumentality-prevention,' 'Milieu,' and 'English Anxiety' substantially forecast their ought-to L2 selves. The article offers practical pedagogical implications and calls for tailored instructional materials to fulfil rural English language learners' motivational needs.
This study examines the integration of information technology into rural educational curricula to improve digital literacy. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the study identifies factors influencing technology adoption in rural schools, including perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioral intention, and socio-cultural influences. The findings highlight the importance of adequate infrastructure, customized training, and active community participation in supporting successful technology integration. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that culturally compatible and user-friendly technologies aligned with educational objectives significantly enhance adoption and usage. This study further demonstrates that community leaders and supportive social environments play a critical role in shaping positive attitudes toward technology adoption. It offers practical policy recommendations for improving digital literacy, reducing the digital divide, and supporting sustainable technology adoption in rural educational communities.
Mobile wallets are reshaping tourist transactions, yet their adoption in geographically fragile mountain destinations remains underexplored. This article examines how tourists in Uttarakhand's Garhwal region navigate mobile wallet use amid fluctuating connectivity, uneven merchant acceptance, and infrastructural uncertainty. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, the research employs a two-round, Delphi-inspired qualitative design involving 20 tourism service providers. Inductive thematic analysis identifies environmental stimuli (connectivity reliability, institutional trust, usability cues), cognitive-affective evaluations (perceived usefulness, anxiety, satisfaction), and adaptive behavioural responses (continued use, wallet switching, fallback to cash). Key themes are analysed using a context-sensitive conceptual framework to explain interviewees' experiences with digital payment in the mountain tourism ecosystem researched. By highlighting emotional assurance and infrastructural volatility, the research advances SOR theory and offers practical insights for strengthening trust-centred, resilient digital payment systems in remote tourism destinations.
This research, part of a broader project, explored barriers to home-school partnerships in rural secondary schools in Delta State, Nigeria, serving predominantly at-risk student populations. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's [1977. Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32(7), 513-531] ecological theory and interview data of 33 teachers and 16 parents, the study examined how home and school micro-settings and broader macro-level factors constrain meso-connections between teachers and parents. Teachers identified parental poverty, attitudes linked to low educational attainment, and guardianship responsibilities as barriers to parental involvement. Parents highlighted school practices (manual labour, poor teaching quality, and financial demands), alongside economic hardship, as obstacles to engagement in their children's education. Despite differing perspectives, both groups emphasised the significant influence of poverty on parental involvement. The study highlights the need for targeted interventions to strengthen home-school partnerships in disadvantaged rural contexts.
Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) has become an emerging strategy for improving the learning outcomes of historically marginalised children. Its applicability in decolonising education within African, historically colonised and multicultural contexts, however, is a developing field. This article presents findings from a Ghanaian rural basic school. Educators, teachers, students, and community participants are engaged to qualitatively investigate strategies for co-creating CRP to decolonise education outcomes for rural communities. Data collection entailed interviews with the school principal and a community leader, focus group discussions with teachers and adult household members, a community meeting discussion, teachers' reflective essay, fieldnotes, student assignment and documents. Using a grounded theory approach, with multiple cycles of inductive coding of data themes, sensitising concepts emerged. Findings revealed that school-community cultural synergy can leverage students' home cultural assets as learning resources, thus connecting schooling and community needs to offer affordances for decolonising curriculum in Africa through CRP. This article argues for a deeper engagement with collaborative school cultures that empower community education stakeholders to retrieve - "Sankofa" - and integrate the African traditionally-valued collectivist ways of learning into school through greater blending of home and school cultural capital.
Under justifications of health and security, Australian federal and state governments enacted stringent border restrictions during COVID-19. Whilst the economic and health impacts of such restrictions are a developing area of scholarship, impacts on rural citizens' ontological security and how people view the state and state institutions are less well understood. This research aims to contribute to addressing this gap through a qualitative study comprising semi-structured interviews with 35 people from the Queensland border town of Goondiwindi. This research found an aggregate reduction in the ontological security of rural participants resulting from their experiences with border restrictions during COVID-19. The findings illustrate a sustained narrative of anxiety and insecurity, identifying trends of distrust and suspicion of public institutions. This research provides avenues for addressing the ontological needs of the citizenry as an analeptic against cultures of sustained fear.
First year university is a time of transition and identity development for young people. Faced with new challenges, they navigate study, social relationships and financial independence. Young people from rural communities are especially vulnerable, with increased mental health and suicide risk. This article presents qualitative findings from exploratory research focused on understanding the mental health and self-care knowledge and behaviours of first-year students in agriculture programmes at two universities in New Zealand. The research involved semi-structured interviews with 15 first-year students. Findings showed that mothers delivered key messages about self-care and mental well-being that supported young people from rural communities during their first year of university study. This research acknowledges the role rural mothers play as key supports and mental health educators for young people. It highlights the importance of ensuring that educators and researchers consider the role rural mothers play as protective factors for young people as they transition to early adulthood.
This article examines how democracy, local government participation, and time taken to achieve new rural criteria influenced residents' satisfaction with a rural development program in Vietnam. A questionnaire was distributed to 360 families inhabiting different communes in rural areas of Ho Chi Minh City. The partial least squares (PLS) statistic was used with SmartPLS software to analyse data. Results show the local government participation and residents' discussion, contribution, and examination of democracy significantly influenced the time taken to achieve the new rural criteria. Furthermore, the level of contributions and benefits, local government participation, and time to achieve the new rural criteria significantly affected residents' satisfaction with the new rural development program. Findings contribute to the validation of motivational theories and literature on democracy and rural development, as well as provide suggestions, improving the society.
Rural adults demonstrate lower rates of help-seeking for psychological distress than their urban counterparts, despite a more severe experience of psychological symptoms. While logistical barriers limiting rural adults' access to mental healthcare are well documented, less attention has been given to psychosocial factors that may influence help-seeking behaviours in rural communities. This article examines the role of perceived stigma in the relation between rural adults' psychological distress and willingness to seek psychological help. It was hypothesised that psychological distress would positively predict help-seeking willingness and that perceived stigma would moderate this relation, buffering the effect of distress on help-seeking. Unexpectedly, higher psychological distress was associated with lower willingness to seek help. Moreover, perceived stigma did not significantly moderate the distress-help-seeking relation or independently predict help-seeking behaviours. These findings challenge existing assumptions about mental healthcare utilisation and highlight the need for future research to explore alternative explanations for the rural population.
Life in rural communities is often marked by strong ties to land, agriculture, and close interpersonal relationships, yet remoteness can limit educational and employment opportunities. As a result, internal migration becomes a significant consideration for adults raised in rural areas who seek improved quality of life. This study examines the perceptions of rural homegrown adults in Israel regarding motives for internal migration, using the push-pull theoretical framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 adults who grew up in the Israeli northern rural periphery. Deductive thematic analysis identified two main push factors: limited educational opportunities and restricted employment options, and three pull factors: ideology, community significance, and family support. The analysis further revealed three participant profiles: doubters, compromisers, and determinates. Overall, the findings illuminate the tension between strong attachment to place, identity, and belonging, and aspirations for broader life opportunities, highlighting the complex role of rurality in shaping migration-related decisions.
In rural areas where tourism and agriculture intersect, community wellbeing is shaped not only by economic resources but also by intangible forms of capital, particularly social capital (SC) and human capital (HC). This study examines the influence of SC and HC on Quality of Life (QoL) in Sidomulyo Village, a tourism-oriented rural community in Indonesia. Using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the analysis draws on household survey data from 307 respondents collected in May-June 2023. The findings show that both SC and HC significantly enhance QoL, with the effect of HC largely mediated through SC. These results highlight the central role of trust, cooperation, and kinship networks in supporting collective wellbeing. By demonstrating how interactions between human and social capital contribute to inclusive and sustainable outcomes, the study offers empirical insights for rural tourism development and provides policy-relevant guidance for fostering resilient, community-led tourism models.
This research investigates the role of social support in shaping the consumption intentions of rural elderly individuals for elderly care services. Focusing on five types of social support (emotional, instrumental, informational, esteem, and social companionship) the article examines how these effect willingness to engage with elderly care services in rural settings. Data collected from 810 rural elderly respondents in Liaoning, China, indicate that emotional, instrumental, informational, and esteem support significantly enhance consumption intentions, while social companionship support has a minimal effect. These findings suggest that tailored social support strategies can increase elderly care service engagement, particularly in rural areas where formal care services are often lacking, providing actionable insights for policymakers and service providers to increase elderly care service accessibility in rural regions from the perspective of social support.
Although digital adaptation was a universal mechanism in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a challenge for rural communities. This article identifies the role of digital technology in stimulating rural community resilience to pandemic consequences in Indonesia, a country in the Global South. Two villages, characterised by differing levels of digital capabilities and socio-institutional contexts, were researched utilising qualitative methodologies. Findings show digital technology provided new knowledge and skills, but also presented challenges and difficulties that necessitated collective efforts. In the context of the rural Global South, where digital developments are limited, collective action at the community level remains necessary to make digital technology useful. Existing sociocultural norms, values, and institutional arrangements, as well as leadership, facilitated adaptation, but requires transformation for further adaptive capacity development.
The concept of poverty is multidimensional, and therefore, its meaning differs among people, communities, and countries. This research examines the perspectives of local people in Manicaland Province about the meaning and causes of poverty in their communities. After establishing a poverty criterion, qualitative research methods, which include in-depth interviews, informal conversations, and observations, were used to collect data from 43 locals in rural areas. The results show local people perceived poverty as a lack of basic needs, farm implements, domestic animals, and not affording school fees. They attributed the prevalence of poverty in their communities to individualistic, structuralist, and fatalistic causes. Understanding poor people's interpretation of the meaning and causes of poverty before establishing development projects is key to addressing poverty according to locals' expectations.
This article explores the intersectionality of disability, Indigenous culture, and education in an Ayta Sambal community in Zambales, Philippines. Using a descriptive phenomenological approach incorporating in-depth interviews, informal dialogues, participant observation, and focus group discussions, insights are collected from Ayta students, families, educators, and community leaders. The findings reveal multifaceted notions of disability among Ayta learners: from feelings of otherness to learning challenges and vulnerability to bullying. Disability is often downplayed when individuals contribute to communal responsibilities, while socially disruptive behaviours are viewed as more disabling. These perceptions are shaped by biomedical, socioeconomic, spiritual, and poverty-related factors. In sum, the study engenders culturally sensitive and inclusive education frameworks, community-based disability support systems, and the decolonisation of educational policies and practices to intentionally address the needs of Indigenous learners with disability.
Agricultural innovations, such as climate-smart practices and improved crop varieties, are crucial for enhancing productivity and sustainability in rural communities, particularly in developing nations. However, social, economic, and institutional factors often hinder the adoption of these innovations. This study uses an integrated Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) approach to examine the role of opinion leaders in influencing the adoption of agricultural technologies in rural India. PCA identifies the most critical factors affecting adoption, while ISM structures the interrelationships among these factors into a hierarchical model. The findings highlight that opinion leader's adoption status, ease of contact, and frequency of interaction are the most influential drivers of innovation adoption. Leadership traits, personality strength, and social connections, such as kinship ties, also significantly impact the process. Additionally, economic status and education influence farmers' ability to adopt new practices. The study provides valuable insights for policymakers, suggesting that integrating opinion leaders into extension services and improving access to advisory resources can enhance innovation uptake, driving sustainable development in rural farming communities.
In the context of promoting sustainable tourism after COVID-19, this research investigates the influences of the pandemic on the Can Gio Mangrove Biosphere Reserve, the sole coastal rural district of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It examines the factors that contribute most to ecotourism resilience (ETR) and explores how the local community can leverage these learnings for sustainable development in the "new normal". By means of quantitative and stratified random sampling, the research reveals that the most prominent negative consequences were reduced ecotourism visitations and local livelihood losses. The lockdowns offered the ecological system a window for recovery. Social resilience (SR) emerged as the strongest dimension, largely attributed to high levels of community participation and collaboration. Conversely, governance resilience (GR) appeared weakest, highlighting the need for improved collaboration between the authorities and residents.
Food insecurity among marginal farmers in Aceh Province, Indonesia, illustrates the complex interplay of economic, environmental, and socio-cultural factors undermining resilience. This study, based on data from 378 farming households, applied the House of Risk (HOR) and Vulnerability as Expected Poverty (VEP) models to identify key risks and strategies. Internal factors, - land ownership, low yields, and limited capital- account for 60% of food insecurity risks, while external drivers, such as water scarcity (23%) and climate change (20%), amplify vulnerability. Regression analysis showed that education, diversified incomes, and land ownership enhance resilience, whereas shocks like COVID-19 and rising food prices worsen insecurity. Households commonly relied on social networks and community initiatives, though unsustainable coping strategies, like asset liquidation, persisted. The study recommends expanding financial services, promoting sustainable agriculture, and investing in climate-resilient infrastructure. Findings offer insights for tackling food insecurity in conflict-affected and climate-vulnerable regions, emphasizing the need for integrated, equity-driven interventions.
