Abstract: Small rural schools play the role of “education bottom” and education equity guarantee, which will exist for a long time in China’ s social development. CiteSpace method and econometric model was used to empirically analyze the impact of government driving force, social driving force and demand pulling force on the development of rural small schools. The results showed that, the research scholars were single and prominent, the elite team had not yet formed, and the centrality of the core authors had not been highlighted; Research institutions tended to be centralized, with low degree of interdisciplinary integration; Research frontier was developing from “point” to “area” , and the policy had a great impact; Teacher input in the government driving force, the researchers in the social driving force, and education results in the demand driving force had a significant role in promoting the development of rural small schools, while education input, research institutions, research frontiers, etc. did not play a significant role. Therefore, the construction process of “small and beautiful” rural small schools should be promoted by strengthening top-level design, cultivating research think tanks, promoting the supply side structural reform of teacher input, and improving the teaching quality.