Concerning about the issues of the inequality of educational opportunity (in terms of input, process, and outcome) at rural schools, the aim of this study is to establish educational database for the educational ecology analysis of rural education in Taiwan. Rural school data, including basic institutional data, student composition, educational investment, learning opportunity, and learning outcome, will be collected, merged, and analyzed through Geographic Information System (GIS) to illustrate the “geography of opportunity” in rural areas. With the hope that the data construction and analysis of this study may contribute to future study of education for the disadvantaged and to the improvement of related educational policies and practices, the purposes of this study include: (1) to understand the accesses to resources and educational investment at rural schools, (2) to understand the learning opportunities and learning outcome of students at rural schools, (3) to understand the educational ecology and pedagogical needs or rural schools, (4) to develop and maintain the database of rural schools for the future longitudinal follow-up studies of the related issues, (5) to apply GIS analysis techniques to holistically illustrate the geographic and structural issues of rural education in Taiwan and to provide suggestions for related policy making. Since it’s a large scale survey and database building, this project is a two-year study design. The primary foci of the first year are to collect and integrate basic school data, to construct framework for analysis and structure for data input, and to develop educational opportunity questionnaire. In the second year, the questionnaire survey and field visits will be conducted nation-wide, the database of rural schools will be established and GIS techniques will be applied for the analysis and illustration of educational ecology of rural schools in Taiwan.
