From Rural School Decline to Institutional Innovation: School Transformation under Alternative Governance Arrangements in Taiwan

Abstract Book of the 10th International Conference on New Trends in Teaching and Education

Year: 2026

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From Rural School Decline to Institutional Innovation: School Transformation under Alternative Governance Arrangements in Taiwan

Robin Jung-Cheng Chen

ABSTRACT:

This study examines the institutional transformation of rural schools in Taiwan in response to long-standing challenges such as declining enrollment, limited resources, and administrative overload. Since the mid-2010s, Taiwan has introduced policy reforms that allow public schools to adopt alternative governance arrangements and greater regulatory flexibility, creating new possibilities for organizational restructuring and school-level innovation—particularly in rural areas.
Focusing on three transformation models—government-run public schools, publicly owned schools under private management, and Indigenous experimental schools—this study conceptualizes rural school reform as a process of institutional and governance transformation rather than a purely curricular or pedagogical change.
Adopting a qualitative, comparative multiple-case study design, the research draws on semi-structured interviews with principals from twelve transformed rural schools, supplemented by focus groups, field observations, and document analysis. Cross-case analysis explores how different governance logics and degrees of institutional autonomy shape schools’ capacity to respond to persistent rural challenges, including enrollment decline, administrative burden, and sustainability.
The findings indicate that while institutional transformation has expanded schools’ operational flexibility and innovation capacity, high teacher turnover and ongoing challenges related to teacher professionalism and capacity development remain critical constraints on the long-term sustainability of rural school reform.

Keywords: Institutional transformation, Rural education, School governance