Conference Agenda

Situations of poverty have been rising in Europe for some time, with the risk of widening inequalities (digital divide, school dropout, employment). With the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation has only deteriorated (European Commission, 2021). Among the families most at risk from increased living costs and social exclusion are those of people from a migrant background. As reports from several European countries indicate (Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain – Eurochild 2022), young people from a migrant background are among those at greatest risk of poverty/social exclusion (alongside young Roma people and children of single-parent households – StC, 2021). In these groups, we find many of the traits that characterise at-risk families: large families, (under)employment in low-paying work, minority. Intersectional theory (Cho et al., 2013) posits that the presence of multiple forms of diversity amplifies the experience of exclusion and subordination faced by certain categories.

Alongside childcare, healthcare and housing, education and school are key battlegrounds in the fight against the increasing risk of social exclusion and poverty among youth. Indeed, “education is one of the key deliverables expected under the NRRP, in 2022/2023. The plan calls for comprehensive reforms and substantial investments to strengthen education and improve primary and secondary education outcomes” (Eurochild, 2022, 70).

While the EU’s Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan recognises the value of education in promoting inclusion (“everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education” – European Commission, 2021, 44) young people’s school experiences remain a “mixed bag”. The school is an arena for mutual recognition, empowerment, and capacitation, but also one in which students can experience discrimination, isolation, and negative forms of selection. With the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes that underpin hierarchical relationships between social groups, the socioeconomic inequalities of the outside world are frequently reproduced within the school system. Children from a migrant background, in particular, are overrepresented among school dropouts and under-achievers (Eurochild 2022, 52).

Students from minorities encounter numerous difficulties in Western education that are often comprehended through the lens of deficit thinking (Yosso, 2005). Students whose strengths differ from those recognised by the curriculum and in society are considered in terms of what they do not know, relative to the education system’s established standards (Levinson, 2011).

Deficit thinking provided a theoretical-scholarly underpinning to a compensatory (and assimilationist) approach to practice involving students from “different” social or cultural situations. In earlier days, in Europe, it was this compensatory approach that characterised the relationship between the school institution and students from a migratory background.

Despite the fact that, at a legislative-policy level, the compensatory mindset was superseded decades ago by an intercultural approach, day-to-day experiences of school and real-life socio-cultural contexts present a more complex, multi-faceted reality. Lacking training in the hidden dimensions of culture (Hall, 1990), well-meaning teachers often regard such students – with their “different” competences, socioeconomic status, and family background – as somehow “lacking”, and end up contributing to the reproduction of existing inequalities.

Drawing on authors working from a decolonial standpoint (Quijano, 1992; Dussel, 2000; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), the present contribution seeks to set out a theoretical explanation of the academic difficulties faced by these students (author, 2022), and to re-examine the theoretical underpinning of the deficit thinking that characterises the encounter with students from minority and low-socioeconomic-status backgrounds across the Global West (see Anzaldua, 2012; Dei et al., 2000; Zoric, 2014).

Inspired by the concept of the “coloniality of knowledge” developed by Anibal Quijano (1992), which is central to the decolonial literature, is our guiding research question: is there a connection between the deficit-thinking approach to education and the "coloniality of knowledge"?

In this paper we present parts of our book about diversity of opinion in the classroom. The book is based on empirical examples from two qualitative studies of teachers and students in junior high and high schools in Norway. One of the studies investigates students’ understandings of and associations to prejudice and stereotypes tied to minority groups and identities in school, while the other explores teachers’ practices in working with awareness raising and prevention of prejudice. Norwegian schools are responsible to facilitate for diversity of opinions and to equip students to manage it (KD, 2017), and teachers have a central role in managing the school’s educational mission related to awareness of attitudes and values among students. The empirical material from the two studies, however, suggests that discomfort and uncertainty in relation to diversity of opinions in the classroom can affect teaching situations for both teachers and students. The teachers’ narratives appear to be closely linked to contextual factors and the social dynamics in the classroom, and their practices seem to largely be shaped by their own choices and assessment in each situation. In the students’ stories, on the other hand, discomfort and uncertainty related diversity of opinions are emphasized. Their uncertainty and discomfort seem linked to both specific educational topics as well as contextual factors and the social dynamics, which in turn can affect the possibilities of diversity of opinions in the classroom.

In what is referred to as the «pedagogy of discomfort» (Boler & Zembylas, 2003; Zembylas & Papamichael, 2017), discomfort is understood as a prerequisite for the development of critical thinking and democratic formation (Røthing, 2019). Against this background, discomfort plays a central role in our discussion of the empirical material, and we take as our starting point the following questions: In what ways can relational aspects in the classroom influence the possibilities for diversity of opinions in teaching situations? To discuss this, we will draw on perspectives on discomfort in the teaching (Boler & Zembylas, 2003; Zembylas & Papamichael, 2017) and the idea of ​​the classroom as a «safe space» for students (Arao & Clemens, 2013; Barrett, 2010; Flensner & von der Lippe, 2019; Callan, 2016).

This paper explores school attitudes to child poverty in England and interrogates these through a wider European frame. Often, research about education uses the term ‘schools’ but means ‘teachers’. However, whilst the attitudes of the teachers matter, so too do the attitudes of others within the school community. The attitudes to poverty of teaching assistants, senior leaders, lunchtime supervisors and governors have a profound effect on how children and families living in poverty experience school life.

Despite a body of scholarly research suggesting poverty is not a simple concept but is messy, complex and complicated, revealing itself as amorphous and highly contextualised (Gorski, 2017; Emery, et al, 2022), discourses associated with poverty in education have been historically packaged into neat and simplified solutions to overcome gaps in attainment in order to ‘fix the problem’ of poverty, see for example the work done by the OECD.(Salinas,2018). Addressing poverty and social inequalities has long been the responsibility of schools, as ‘engines of social mobility’ (Gibb, 2016), accountable for the success of students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds as part of a contemporary, common-sense aim of education, based on meritocratic narratives of the last twenty-five years (Owens and St Croix, 2020).

For schools, extant education policy responses, linked to crude indicators of poverty, such as Free School Meals (FSM) in England, have been associated with individualised interventions and overcoming barriers to learning for a seemingly homogenised group of pupils. Concomitantly, levels of accountability and the ‘standards agenda’ have fixated schools work on attainment, progress and an ability ‘to deliver’ within an increasingly apparent performance culture (Ball et al, 2012). The contemporary education policy, therefore, with its onus on progress and commitment to attainment no matter the economic status of pupils, does not acknowledge the larger, societal barriers that might affect those living in poverty nor recognise potential deficit views and myths associated with a broad, decontextualised ‘culture of poverty’ (Gorski, 2017). For too long, reductive education policy responses to poverty have made invisible the deeper histories, stories, emotions and relationships the child resides in (Emery et al, 2022).

Research, mostly from America (Ullucci and Howard, 2015) but also emerging in England (Hayes et al, 2017) and Europe (Strbova, 2012), tells us that this ‘culture of poverty’ ideology has shaped schools and teachers’ attitudes towards pupils living in poverty. Yet in reality, outside of the USA, we have little to no knowledge of what these attitudes are beyond broad brushstrokes. Certainly, in England, beyond the work of Simpson et al (2017), there is a paucity of either tools or data regarding school attitudes. Commensurately, we need to gain a clear understanding of what attitudes are held by those working within schools in England towards children living in poverty.

Adopting a critical frame and building on the thinking of Gorski (2017), we consider three, interrelated questions: How are social mobility discourses reflected in schools' attitudes to poverty? What do these attitudes say about the contemporary, professional identity of staff? To what extent can social mobility, as the normative education poverty discourse, be considered ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2010)?