Culture & Poverty

Emtinan Alqurashi
Elif Gokbel

Overview
- Introducing poverty
- Key points on poverty
- Culture and education
- Connections to Social Justice
- Empirical studies

Introducing Poverty
The extent to which an individual does without resources.
-

Financial
Emotional
Mental
Spiritual
Physical
Support systems
Role models
Knowledge of hidden rules

Payne, (2003, 2005)

Key points on poverty

It is relative.
It occur in all races and in all countries.
There are cultural differences in poverty.
Generational poverty and situational poverty are different.
Schools operate from middle-class norms and values.
Individuals bring with them the hidden rules of the class in which
they were raised.

Payne, (2003, 2005)

Key points on poverty

To move from poverty to middle class, one must give up (for a
period of time) relationships for achievement.
Two things that help one move out of poverty are education and
relationships.
Four reasons one leaves poverty are:
Its painful to stay
A vision or goal
A key relationship
A special talent or skill
Payne, (2003, 2005)

Culture and education

Culture:
- norms, values, attitudes and
patterns of behavior
- spiritual, material, intellectual and
emotional features of society
- lifestyles, ways of living together,
value systems, traditions and
beliefs
- shapes individuals worldviews

(Lamont & Small, 2008)

Connections to social justice

Facts from UNESCO

-Mothers schooling / reduces infant mortality
-Secondary education for girls / increases wage
-Schooling for a countrys population / reduces civil war
-People of voting age with a primary education / support democracy
-Wellnourished children / be in the correct grade at school
-Lowincome countries with basic reading skills/ cut in global poverty

https://youtu.be/Ft5sDJG054w

How poverty affects classroom

engagement
One in five U.S. children under the age of 18or 16 million children
live in poverty.
Students from low-income households are more likely to struggle with
engagementfor seven reasons.
o

Health and nutrition

Vocabulary

Effort

Hope and the growth of mind-set

Cognition

Relationships

Distress

(Jensen, 2010)

1)Health and nutrition

Children from low SES conditions are

less likely to exercise, get proper

diagnoses, receive appropriate
and prompt medical attention

exposed to food with lower

nutritional value

What you can do:

give attention to physical
education programs
o the use of games, movement,
and drama, etc.

2)Vocabulary
Low, middle, and upper income families

What you can do:

Include vocabulary building in
engagement activities, such as,
trading card activities, class mixer
incorporate vocabulary practice
into daily rituals

3) Effort
Research suggests, parents from
poor families work as much as
parents of middle- or upper-class
families do --inherited laziness

Lack of hope and optimism

The school and teachers as a primary
factor affecting student motivation

What you can do:

strengthen your relationships
with students by revealing more
of yourself and learning more
about your students
make connections between
learning and students' worlds
set high goals and sell students
on their chances to reach them

4) Hope and the growth of mind-set

lowered expectations about future
outcomes

What you can do:

Guide students in making smarter
strategy choices and cultivating a
positive attitude
Don't use comforting phrases that
imply that even though a student isn't
good at something, he or she has
"other" strengths

5) Cognition
low-SES children show cognitive
problems (Jensen, 2013), including
-short attention spans,
-high levels of distractibility,
-difficulty monitoring the quality of their work,
and
-difficulty generating new solutions to problems

What you can do:

Focus on the core academic skills that
students need the most
Such as, how to organize, study, take notes,
prioritize, remember key ideas and then
problem-solving, processing, and workingmemory skills.

6) Relationships
Single parent caregiver, missing
role models
Disruptive home relationships

What you can do:

Need of strong, positive, caring adults
The more you care, the better the
foundation for interventions

7) Distress
Typical behaviors of distressed
children:
-angry "in your face" assertiveness or
-disconnected "leave me alone"
passivity

What you can do:

Reduce stress by embedding
more classroom fun in academics
Teach students ongoing coping
skills so they can better deal with
their stressors

A Study about Educational Experiences

of Children in the U.S. South
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K)
(NCES, 2001)
3,501 children, in 1,208 classrooms, in 246 schools
Purpose: exploring the contexts of educational achievement in the South,
considering issues of race and SES
Why South: The large ethnic minority population and the high levels of
child poverty in the South
Fram, Miller-Cribbs, &Van Horn (2007)

Findings & Conclusion

Findings:
Smaller gains in reading:
Children who repeated kindergarten, children from single-parent households,
and children of teenage mothers
Greater gains in reading:
-Girls, longer teacher tenure, reading peers
Conclusion:
-Potential barriers to these children's educational achievement; less parental
time and know-how for supporting children's learning

Implications
How social workers might promote greater equality in educational
opportunities and outcomes:
Advocating for mixed-ability peer groups may empower vulnerable
children toward greater school success.
Educating teachers and school administrators on building support for
integration among the more privileged families whose children are
overrepresented in high-skill groups.
strengthening the policies and programs that promote economic equality
and meaningful choices about family formation and parenting.

References
Fram, M. S., Miller-Cribbs, J. E., & Van Horn, L. (2007). Poverty, race, and the contexts of achievement: Examining educational experiences of children in
the US South. Social Work, 52(4), 309-319.
Jensen, E. (2010). http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may13/vol70/num08/How-Poverty-Affects-Classroom-Engagement.aspx
Lamont, M., & Small, M. L. (2008). How culture matters: Enriching our understanding of poverty. In A. Lin & D. Harris (Eds.), The Colors of Poverty: Why
Racial and Ethinic Disparities Persist (pp. 76-102). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Payne, R. K. (2003).Understanding and Working with Students and Adults from Poverty: Poverty Series. Highlands, TX: aha! Process, Inc.
Payne, R. K. (2005). A framework for understanding poverty. Highlands, TX: aha! Process, Inc.
UNESCO, 2011. EFA Global Monitoring Report the hidden crisis: armed conflict and education. 3 Gene Sperling and Barbara Herz, 2004. What Works in
Girls Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World, Council for Foreign Relation, Center for International education. 4 See above, note 2. 5
UNESCO, 2009. EFA Global Monitoring Report overcoming inequalities: why governance matters. 6 Save the Children, 2013. Food for Thought Tackling
child malnutrition to unlock potential and boost prosperity. 7 See above, note 2. 8
United Nations, 2012. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012. 9
UNESCO, 2012. Education for All Global Monitoring Report Youth and Skills: putting education to work.