Abstract:

The sense of place among rural teachers serves as a crucial emotional bond for sustaining the rural educational ecosystem, and its cultivation holds strategic significance for the revitalization of rural education. Guided by the theory of sense of place, this study deconstructs rural teachers’ sense of place into four dimensions: place cognition, place dependence, place attachment, and place identity. Employing an innovative photovoice method, a qualitative research was conducted on 24 rural teachers to systematically explore the formation and cultivation paths of their sense of place.The findings reveal that material space stimulates the linear generation of the sense of place through environmental elements; teachers’ daily behavioral practices shape the sense of place non-linearly via human-environment interaction; and key events process the sense of place by triggering mental imagery movements. These three factors interact multidimensionally and collaboratively to shape rural teachers’ sense of place. Based on these findings, a strategy system for cultivating rural teachers’ sense of place should be established from three aspects: reconstructing the embodied material environment and activating the potential of spatial narratives; innovating interactive practical activities to co-shape emotional connections; and creating a positive emotional atmosphere to drive emotional resonance. This study breaks through traditional research paradigms, realizes the visual “presentation” of “on-site” experiences through photovoice, dynamically analyzes the complex process of sense of place formation, and provides new theoretical and practical approaches for the construction of rural teacher teams and the revitalization of rural education.

Key words: rural teachers, sense of place, photo voice