Making meaning of rural teaching: A phenomenological study of teachers' daily life experiences

Abstract

Rural teachers' experiences in village schools represent a critical dimension of educational development. This phenomenological study explored the meanings that teachers attribute to being a teacher in village schools through their daily lived experiences. The study examined how classroom teachers working in village schools construct meaning from their experiences across four dimensions: managing basic needs and social integration, participating in daily village life, developing teacher-community relationships, and structuring time outside school hours. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 11 classroom teachers (4 female, 7 male) working in multigrade village schools across seven provinces in Türkiye and analyzed using phenomenological methods. The findings reveal that teachers' meaning-making processes are deeply influenced by their cultural alignment with the community, gender dynamics, and physical infrastructure arrangements. While teachers have developed effective strategies for managing basic needs, their sense of professional identity and meaning is significantly shaped by the degree of their community integration. The physical separation of teacher housing from village centers emerged as a critical factor in how teachers interpret their role and position within the community. Teachers sharing cultural similarities with their assigned communities demonstrated more positive meaning-making patterns and deeper understanding of their professional role. Gender emerged as a crucial factor in how teachers construct meaning from their experiences, particularly in accessing and interpreting community spaces and relationships. The study provides significant insights into how rural teachers interpret and make meaning of their professional experiences, suggesting that successful rural teaching involves complex processes of professional identity construction and meaning-making beyond mere adaptation to physical conditions. These findings have important implications for understanding rural teacher identity development and designing support systems that address both practical and existential aspects of rural teaching.