Common worlding is a collective pedagogical approach. It is also a deliberate move to open up education to worlds beyond narrow human preoccupations and concerns and beyond its standard framing as an exclusively social practice. In this article, we identify some of the guiding principles that underpin this approach and explain how they work out in practice. We do so by offering a selection of illustrative vignettes drawn from the Walking with Wildlife in Wild Weather Times early childhood research project in Canberra, Australia, and from the Witnessing the Ruins of Progress early childhood research collaboratory in Ontario, Canada.

In 2000, Dr. Allan C. Lauzon and Danielle Leahy completed a literature review on rural schools and educational reform, concluding that rural schools were indeed worth saving. In 2017, I conducted a literature review with the goal of offering an update to that article, investigating the post-2001 research on the impact of rural school closures; the effects of bussing of rural students to/from school; and student performance in small schools and mixed-grade classes. The results were mixed and contradictory, equally puzzling to the complexity of defining what is "rural" and what is "small school". While some researchers continue to point out the unique place of local schools in rural settings, many also note the lack of large-scale studies into the impact of rural school closures, especially impact on students, despite the social burden that has been placed on them and our belief in equality in that "who pays and the price they pay, is always of interest" (bell hooks).

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