ABSTRACT

Education is considered a path for escaping poverty. However, poverty and lack of success in school are closely linked. Understanding structural factors within society that cause poverty and their influence on learning and educational outcomes requires reshaping teacher education programmes. There is a need for programmes that adopt the social justice perspective and challenge prevalent deficit perceptions of people in poverty, through critical reflection. This article presents a qualitative study that analysed the responses of teachers in Israel who were exposed to life stories of people in poverty as a means of arousing poverty-awareness. Our experience shows that reflexive reading of life stories can challenge stereotypes, deepen teachers’ understanding of socio-economic disadvantage, and help sensitise them to school pedagogies and practices that exacerbate inequality. This change of teachers’ understandings and attitudes has the potential to develop a partnership-based relationship with families living in poverty and improve student’s educational achievement.

摘要

教育被认为是摆脱贫困的途径。然而，贫困和学校成绩不佳是密切相关的。了解社会中导致贫困的结构性因素及其对学习和教育成果的影响，需要重新制定教师教育计划。需要采用社会正义观点并通过批判性反思来挑战贫困人口普遍存在的赤字观念的计划。本文介绍了一项定性研究，该研究分析了以色列教师的反应，他们将贫困人口的生活故事作为唤起贫困意识的一种手段。我们的经验表明，反思性阅读生活故事可以挑战刻板印象，加深教师对社会经济劣势的理解，并帮助他们对加剧不平等的学校教学法和做法敏感。教师理解和态度的这种改变有可能与生活贫困的家庭建立以伙伴关系为基础的关系，并提高学生的教育成就。