LEADING IN THE OPEN: RURAL EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY IN TIMES OF LIQUID SOCIETY

Abstract

This bibliographic review article critically examines the intersection between liquid society, pedagogical leadership, and the educational reality of rural areas in Colombia, with the purpose of systematizing the most relevant contributions from the literature produced between 2000 and 2025, and of reflecting upon the real implications for the training and practice of teacher leadership. Based on a search and analysis of academic sources on educational leadership, rural studies, and phenomenological approaches which is the only one that allows for understanding

and describing the essence of the lived experiences of educational actors in rural contexts, beyond mere quantifiable data or structural models that tend to generalize classroom reality this study makes it possible to identify, in a precise manner, the trends, gaps, and tensions that shape school management in contexts characterized by structural precariousness, social inequality, and the accelerated transformations inherent to liquid modernity.The findings reveal that educational guidelines and policies are often designed from urban logics that fail to respond to rural specificities, producing misalignments between what is normative and what is lived; that teachers are overburdened with administrative tasks that limit their pedagogical role; and that a leadership approach centered on coercion and immediate results predominates, thereby weakening the cultural relevance and sustainability of community educational projects. In the face of these limitations, the literature proposes alternatives based on distributed, humanistic, and non-parametric forms of leadership that recognize territorial particularities and promote educational practices with social rootedness.

From an interpretive phenomenological perspective, this review argues that rural leadership must be understood as a lived experience, traversed by tensions between fragility and resilience, uncertainty and meaning an understanding that restores the voice of teachers and rural communities.