culture & poverty

1. Culture & Poverty
Emtinan Alqurashi
Elif Gokbel

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

3. 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)

4. 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)

5. 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:
➢ It’s painful to stay
➢ A vision or goal
➢ A key relationship
➢ A special talent or skill
Payne, (2003, 2005)

6. 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 individual’s worldviews
(Lamont & Small, 2008)

7. Connections to social justice

8. Facts from UNESCO
-Mother’s schooling / Infant mortality
-Secondary education for girls / Wage
-Schooling for a country’s population / Civil war
-People of voting age with a primary education / support democracy
-Well‐nourished children / be in the correct grade at school
-Low‐income countries with basic reading skills/ cut in global poverty
https://youtu.be/Ft5sDJG054w

9. How poverty affects classroom
engagement
● One in five U.S. children under the age of 18—or 16 million children—
live in poverty.
● Students from low-income households are more likely to struggle with
engagement—for seven reasons.
o Health and nutrition
o Vocabulary
o Effort
o Hope and the growth of mind-set
o Cognition
o Relationships
o Distress

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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 working-
memory skills.

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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)

18. 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
-The significance of school peer group composition

19. 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.

20. 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.