Poverty-aware teacher education

Education is considered a path for escaping poverty. However, poverty and lack of success in school are closely linked. Understanding structural factors within society that cause poverty and their influence on learning and educational outcomes requires reshaping teacher education programmes. There is a need for programmes that adopt the social justice perspective and challenge prevalent deficit perceptions of people in poverty, through critical reflection. This article presents a qualitative study that analysed the responses of teachers in Israel who were exposed to life stories of people in poverty as a means of arousing poverty-awareness. Our experience shows that reflexive reading of life stories can challenge stereotypes, deepen teachers’ understanding of socio-economic disadvantage, and help sensitise them to school pedagogies and practices that exacerbate inequality. This change of teachers’ understandings and attitudes has the potential to develop a partnership-based relationship with families living in poverty and improve student’s educational achievement.