Rural education was heavily contested in the interwar years, rooted in diverging ideas about the countryside and rural community. Adopting a broad definition of education, this thesis examines educational initiatives within voluntary organisations, rural schools and progressive schools established in the countryside. Through an examination of these diverse forms of educational activity, this research redresses the marginalisation of the rural in the history of education and enhances historical understanding of the countryside as an educative space. Drawing on archival and documentary sources which have not been used before, it argues that conceptions of ‘rurality’ and ‘rural community’ shaped the structure and content of education in the countryside during the interwar years. It contends that a critical understanding of ‘rural education’ is needed within the history of education, one that acknowledges the changing representational and physical significance of the countryside. This has importance for a fuller understanding of dominant themes in the field, including progressivism, the expansion of the national education system following the First World War and informal education. This research also contributes to rural history by exposing the different ways in which the rural community was conceptualised among various individuals and groups, in relation to changing ideas about voluntarism, citizenship and gender
