Student teachers' perceptions of poverty and educational achievement

Abstract

This paper reports on a mixed methods study carried out within the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme at the University of Oxford on the ways that the course sought to frame and address the link between poverty and poorer educational outcomes. The study was concerned with the views held by ITE students on the effects of poverty on pupils' learning, well-being, and educational achievement. The paper initially explores why these questions are important, how they are framed internationally, and how they relate to current education policy, particularly in England.Data were collected from student teacher pre-and post PGCE course questionnaires and a focus group discussion. The findings showed a tendency for student teachers to associate low achievement more strongly with family and cultural factors than with socio-economic or school factors, although there was some evidence that the thinking of some students changed during their programme. Implications for policy and practice in ITE are discussed with a view to ensuring that the social justice commitments espoused by many such courses are actually enabled more effectively to influence the learning experiences of beginning teachers.

Conceptualising poverty as a barrier to learning through ‘Poverty proofing the school day’: The genesis and impacts of stigmatisation

“…Thompson et al . () advocate a range of measures to counter deficit thinking amongst trainee teachers and we suggest that the training embedded in the Poverty proofing procedure is a way of challenging the implicit beliefs of both trainee and practising teachers about families in poverty—where they do exist—as well as creating the opportunity for dialogue.…”

“…Reay (), amongst others (e.g. Smyth & Wrigley, ; Thompson et al ., ), has highlighted how working‐class pupils are often construed in the education system by what they lack, which has a detrimental effect on their development and attainment. Locating educational failure within the pupil or home has been challenged as deficit theorising from a socially critical perspective (e.g.…”

Poverty and school processes

“…It is important to examine why a relational conceptualisation of the impact of poverty on schooling does not seem to have been readily available either to policy makers or to school practitioners. Thompson et al (2016) note the absence of research about the fact that educational failure is too often perceived to be located in the individual child/home rather than within institutional practices/cultures. Our evaluation, in understanding stigmatization as in part resulting from a lack of relational justice, necessarily shifts the focus away from the individual child/home.…”

Learning the price of poverty across the UK

“…Much critical research has addressed the disparity between central UK government rhetoric on 'closing the disadvantage gap' and the social consequences of educational reforms (eg Ball, 2016;Thompson, McNicholl and Menter, 2016). However, Francis, Mills and Lupton (2017) have argued that research concerned with social justice has often failed to engage with education policymaking.…”