Abstract: In the past five years, empirical research has become more and more important in the field of rural education with the growing number and enhancing standardization of empirical studies. Driven by public decision-making issues, empirical research on rural education has formed the basic paradigms of large-scale investigation, relational research, intervention experiment research, predictive research and constructive research. For rural education researches, these research paradigms enrich the methodology, expand the problem domain, promote the theoretical development, and respond in a scientific way to major decision-making issues in rural education, such as the allocation of rural education resources, the construction of rural teachers and the development of rural students. In the future, the shift in rural education research issues, the rise of “causal inference”, the use of educational big data and the urgent need for theoretical development will continue to promote the transformation and upgrading of rural education empirical research paradigms, and further promote the scientific public decision-making of rural education.

Key words: rural education, research paradigm, empirical research, scientific decision making