Learning not to be poor: the impossible position of teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand education policy discourse

ABSTRACT

The relationship between poverty and education is a longstanding issue for education policy, research, and practice. Through a policy as discourse approach, this article focuses on the work policy does to define education as a solution to poverty. Recent policy discourses in Aotearoa have positioned the teacher as the most important factor in raising student achievement irrespective of socio-economic factors like poverty. However, by linking student achievement to economic success, those policy discourses also position teachers as a remedy to poverty. This article considers the ways two Aotearoa education policies, Ka Hikitia and Investing in Educational Success, impossibly position teachers between needing to ignore and remedy poverty. The analyses show how both policies impossibly position teachers by reducing education to learning and students and teachers to learners. By positioning teachers as responsible for learning, policies are able to displace structural and historical conditions of poverty through a focus on the work teachers do to improve learning, culminating in a logic where one learns not to be poor. The article concludes with a coda seeking to reverse the impossible position of teachers by describing education as weak, whereby teachers can acknowledge poverty without having to remedy it.

KEYWORDS:

• Education policy
• discourse
• poverty
• teachers
• learning

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the blind reviewers and editors for their supportive and thoughtful feedback.

Notes

1. A decile 2 school is in the lowest 20% of socio-economic enrolment zones in Aotearoa. The decile of Aotearoa schools is calculated based on census data for a school’s enrolment zone. A lower decile indicates a school located in a low socio-economic enrolment zone, and vice versa for higher deciles.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

F. Tony Carusi

F. Tony Carusi is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Education at Massey University. His research interests include philosophy and critical theories of education and post-structural discourse theory.

Timu Niwa

Timu Niwa is the principal of James Cook School in New Zealand and current doctoral candidate within the Institute of Education at Massey University. His research interests include Māori education and educational policy