BEYOND THE CLASSROOM: RURAL COMMUNITIES AS CO-EDUCATORS

Experiential and community-engaged learning can extend education beyond institutional classrooms, while intercultural learning emphasizes meaningful engagement across cultural contexts. Yet international and rural immersion programmes can also reproduce unequal relationships when communities are positioned primarily as sites to observe, study, or “solve.” This practice-oriented paper introduces the Local Narratives approach to experiential learning, which positions rural communities as active co-educators. It explores how educators can design immersion experiences around exchange, reflection, local knowledge, and contribution, enabling learners to encounter communities as sources of knowledge rather than simply as destinations. A practical framework and adaptable design exercise are presented for educators working across international, community-engaged, and experiential learning contexts.