Unexamined Beliefs: Understanding Teachers' Reasoning About Poverty

• In Event: Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education: Teachers

Abstract

This study focused on elementary school teachers’ reasoning about poverty. Data were collected from fifth grade teachers (N = 237) throughout California. To assess explicit beliefs about poverty, teachers completed a survey that asked about their own demographics, values, ideologies, and about their beliefs about the traits of poor and middle-class people and causal attributions for poverty. Overall, participants endorsed more positive and fewer negative traits for both the poor and middle class and believed that poverty is more likely to be caused by reasons outside of an individual’s direct control than by causes within one’s control. Political ideology and the endorsement of System Justification and the Protestant Work Ethic were related to beliefs about poverty. Implications are discussed.

Authors

• Lindsey Nenadal, California State University - Chico

• Rashmita Mistry, University of California - Los Angeles