Schooling and poverty: re-thinking impact, research and social justice

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on poverty, schooling and research and to tease out and discuss some of the concepts that this kind of writing and research work provokes. We frame the issue, briefly introduce each paper and then discuss “keywords” in four sections: living/knowledge, justice/connection, weakness/education, and affect/anxiety.

KEYWORDS:

• Poverty
• teacher education
• purposes of education
• research

Notes

1. Our goal in this article and the special issue is not to define poverty, nor suggest how “it” might be solved. One definition that seems broad enough to encompass the work here suggests that poverty is “a chronic and debilitating condition that results from multiple adverse synergistic risk factors and affects the mind, body, and soul” (Jensen, 2009, p. 6). Linking affects beyond the body and to highlight the chronic nature of situations that people live in seems important, as is the idea that there are negative synergies that conspire to create situations that are difficult to escape from and for which one is neither to blame nor has control over. Iris Marion Young makes the telling point that the “poor” are not a fixed group – people do move out of (see Udah, Singh, Hölscher, & Cartmel, 2019), but also into poverty, though of course this is asymmetrical. It is much harder to leave situations of poverty (and globally more and more people live in poverty (see Young, 2013) also identifies three “wrongs” in assumptions often made about poverty and people who live in poverty. First, poverty is linked to either personal responsibility or structural causation, but not both. Second, background conditions are not seen to be unjust and that people can ascend the economic ladder if they would just try hard enough. Third, it is up to poor people to give accounts for and of their situations and it is assumed that they act in ways that unfairly force others to incur costs instead of showing how social structures are unjust. People who do not live in poverty do not have to give an account of themselves and how they live in the same ways. Clearly there are striking and important differences of the conditions and experiences of people who live in poverty globally, with many people in the Global South not having adequate nutrition, shelter or security. In the Global North some of these conditions are different, though for children and women especially, neglect, violence and abuse is common.

2. Our thinking here is informed by the work of Biesta & Stengel (2016) and Bernstein (2000). And clearly just having our conceptual work “right” is not enough: asking the “right” questions in order to guide our research, and being able to put this work into action remain further crucial, connected, problems.

3. For example, new materialism (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012), posthumanism (Braidotti, 2006, post-critical thinking (Rancière, 2011), post qualitative research (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013), scientificity 3.0 (Webb & Gulson, 2015).

4. Clearly global corporations exert inordinate control over the circulation of wealth and capital and exert enormous pressure on nation-states. As Slaughter (2017, p. 22) notes, In straight power terms, many large global corporations have greater market capitalisation than the GDP of many small countries. Of the world’s 175 largest nation-states and private firms, 112 are corporations. Their CEOs are more important global players than most prime ministers and foreign ministers, at least for purposes that do not require a vote in the United Nations or other international or regional organisations. For example, ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, finances private armies, retains an elite foreign policy team of former diplomats and National Security Council officials, and in some nations wields as much influence as any government. Even in situations where solving a problem does require a vote, governments of weaker nations rarely go against the position of concentrated business interests. And they often seek the support and help of developed country civic organisations in drafting resolutions and supporting their positions in international organisations.

5. See The Hatred of Democracy (Rancière, 2014).

6. Keeping in mind the potentials and pitfalls of the contemporary disruptions to the broadcast logics that education institutions have operated under. As Weston notes, many organisations born within a broadcast logic are being disrupted, destroyed and replaced (Weston, 1997).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP160102784].

Notes on contributors

Stephen Heimans

Stephen Heimans researches education policy enactment that focuses on the politics of education and what happens in government and education institutions. Relatedly, he is interested in approaches to research (in education) that intervene positively in disrupting the relations between education and the ongoing reproduction of inequality. An aspect of this concerns developing methodologies that are collaborative and that problematise existing asymmetrical knowledge relations.

Parlo Singh

Parlo Singh research work focuses on issues of educational equity and social justice. Specifically, she is interested in research partnership work that assists students from disadvantaged communities gain access to complex forms of knowledge. This research has involved working with primary and secondary schools in Queensland, Australia, as well as work in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia through funded research projects. Issues of educational inequity have inevitably dealt with the dynamics of social class, gender, and cultural identity, and theorisations of policy, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment