THE EVALUATION OF THE FLUCTUATION OF EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT OF LATVIAN RURAL SCHOOLS

Nowadaysrural schools function under the conditions of constantly changeableenvironment, where the process of self-development is observed. Due to theinfluence of economical, demographical and social crises the problem of thesustainability of a rural school as the educational environment has becomeurgent. The sustainability of rural community and its cultural environment alsoconsiderably depends on the sustainability of a rural school. The educationalenvironment of rural schools has been studied by the authors of this articlefor many years, providing the multi-dimensional point of view: 1) rural schoolas a viable, self-developing, self-organizing and self-assessing system ofeducational environment; 2) rural school as an open humanistically targetoriented lifelong environment for sustainable development of community; 3)rural school as a learning organization to change and develop. The articleprovides the description of the expertise of educational environment of ruralschools, as a result of which there were analyzed and evaluated the changesthat had taken place in this environment within the period of time of threeyears (2008/2009–2010/2011). The research results enable to draw a conclusionthat very important changes have taken place in the educational environment ofresearch base schools: to ensure the sustainable development, the rural schoolstransform into the educational multi-functional and multi-structural centres ofcommunity. KEYWORDS:ecological approach in the educational research; fluctuation of educationalenvironment; education of community in a rural school; viability of a ruralschool