Exploring Rural Children’s Lived School Experiences

This study examines rural primary school students’ perceptions of school, offering a broad inquiry into how education is structured. By making rural children’s experiences visible, the research aims to contribute to more inclusive and context-sensitive educational policies. In addition, it seeks to provide a methodological contribution to participatory research with children by integrating visual and verbal data. Adopting a phenomenological qualitative design, the study collected data through children’s hand-drawn mind maps and in-depth interviews. Findings reveal that children’s conceptions of school are shaped not only by instructional processes but also by relational experiences, play and free time, digitalization, aspirations tied to urban life, physical spaces, and interactions with nature. These results underscore the multidimensional and experiential significance of school for rural children. The study concludes that rural students attribute layered meanings to school and that these meanings offer guiding principles for integrating children’s perspectives into pedagogical and structural reforms in education.