Abstract:

In the context of the accentuated amplification of the school population migration from the rural to the urban areas, one of the great current challenges of the rural schools in Romania is the need to create and maintain a positive institutional image.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory research carried out with the purpose of highlighting the image of the Romanian school in the rural area, from the perspective of attractiveness, modernism and actuality, in antithesis to the school in the urban environment.

In order to carry out this study, 4 focus groups were organized, in which 52 subjects participated, out of which half completed the secondary education cycle in the rural area. By applying projective techniques such as the personification of the general school they attended and creating a portrait of the person representing the school, the profiles of the two secondary education systems were created. The profiles were designed according to the following coordinates: moral characteristics, attractiveness, modernism, topicality as well as the masculinity-femininity dimensions of the cultural model proposed by Geert Hofstede. The qualitative research software ATLAS.ti was used in the data analysis process.

The obtained results show the existence of significant differences between the degree of appreciation of the rural schools compared to the urban one. The differences are larger in terms of material resources and infrastructure and they are smaller in terms of human and moral elements.

The general conclusion of the research, leads to the idea that the image of the school is determined on the basis of the symbiosis of the constituent elements, each attribute having a significant importance and each school in the rural area should create a unique identity, based on its own system of values adapted to the specific needs of the local context.

Keywords:

Secondary school, image, rural area, urban area, "Chinese Portrait" technique.