Center for Innovative Rural Collaborative Leadership Education (CIRCLE)

There are 9.7 million rural students in the US.

Mission & Vision

Through the Center for Innovative Rural Collaborative and Leadership Education (CIRCLE), rural educational leaders have access to and support for the same exemplary models of leadership that improve teaching and learning in urban and suburban schools – uniquely adapted to meet the context-specific needs (Williams & Grooms, 2016) of rural and remote school and district educational leaders. CIRCLE collaborates with both rural practitioners and researchers, whose shared interest in improving rural leadership makes them significant partners.

What is CIRCLE?

Mission & Vision

The first rural UCEA center, CIRCLE is a practice-research partnership that amplifies rural voices, disrupts deficit rural stereotypes through innovative rural leadership training, and disseminates partnership results through practitioner and scholarly journals and joint presentations at annual meetings. It is a national clearinghouse for practice-research partnerships (PRPs), focused specifically on improving the preparation and practice of educational leaders in rural contexts, thereby improving equitable learning outcomes for rural students across the country.

What we do

At Circle, we:

Support the development of innovative rural school and district leaders.
Help rural schools and communities identify and celebrate their community cultural wealth.
Expand and deepen the professional learning across the RISL_NIC as a no-cost, innovative school improvement model.
Create a space in which rural educational leaders and their research partners can learn from each other, accessing the RISL_NIC and the open-source suite of data tools derived from the work of the Student-Centered Accountability Program (S-CAP).
Develop publications, presentations, and policy briefs for multiple audiences that disseminate new learning related to CIRCLE findings, with an increased focus on TribalCrit and LatCrit epistemologies.

Areas of Focus

Practice

Thought leader practitioner colleagues partner with university researchers/technical consultants, and network with each other to generate solutions for rural problems of practice through improved leadership with implications for practice, research, and policy.

Research

Practice

The Center will research stages of change leadership implementation, codify rural NIC resources that are key to organizational learning, and provide these tools and processes to our partners at CIRCLE.

Policy

Practice

Policy

We monitor local, regional, and federal policies related to rural education, and engage in research for and the development of policy briefs and white papers that support innovative rural leadership development.

Partner with Circle

There are 9.7 million rural students in the US.

Mission & Vision

Mission & Vision

Mission & Vision

What is CIRCLE?

Mission & Vision

Mission & Vision

What we do

At Circle, we:

Areas of Focus

Practice

Practice

Practice

Research

Practice

Practice

Policy

Practice

Policy

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