Evidence quoted in an OECD report from 2006 shows that the adverse impact of living in challenging socio-economic circumstances on children’s academic attainment is statistically significant in 53 of the 54 OECD countries. In order to address these effects, the European platform against poverty and social exclusion - one of seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy - has made educational under-attainment one of its key action areas. Governments in many other countries, including the USA, New Zealand and Australia, have initiated similar programmes. In the UK specifically, governments have attempted to address educational inequality by implementing a series of educational initiatives, including the Pupil Premium grant and the Closing the Gap programme.

Nevertheless, we argue that the precise effects of poverty on children’s achievements, beliefs and aspirations remain significantly under-researched, as are schools’ views on how poverty and educational disadvantage might be effectively tackled. We also know very little about how student teachers on pre-service courses conceptualise poverty and are prepared during pre-service programmes to work with children from deprived socio-economic circumstances in proactive and effective ways.

Given the importance of teaching for social justice, of particular concern to the teacher educators in this symposium are the following questions: How can students best be prepared for the experiences they may have of working in schools in socio-economically deprived areas - or in schools where poverty, though less prevalent, still has a significant detrimental effect on a minority of learners? In general, how can pre-service courses be best designed to help mitigate the effects of poverty on educational outcomes? How might the impact of such interventions be mediated by students’ attitudes to and understanding of the causes and effects of poverty on learning outcomes?

This symposium offers research-based perspectives on poverty, schools and teacher education from three countries - New Zealand, Scotland and England, aiming to consider the relationships between teacher education, child poverty and educational achievement through a range of substantive, methodological and theoretical perspectives. All the papers describe research-informed initiatives aiming to challenge student teachers’ understandings of and attitudes towards poverty, and to develop awareness of teachers’ roles in combating educational inequality in schooling.

More specifically, the four papers have substantive focuses on the following: workplace learning opportunities for students to investigate the use of the Pupil Premium Grant in England; research into how student teachers involved in a Ministry of Education-sponsored teacher education programme in New Zealand learned to enact effective ‘patterns of practice’; the use of photo elicitation as a means of developing powerful narratives of experience and pedagogical frameworks for action in an inner city location in London; and evaluative research on the impact of a literacy clinic project in Glasgow on challenging and changing the attitudes of the participating student teachers.

The four papers work with different theoretical frameworks in order to analyse key issues around poverty and teacher education, thus enabling analysis of the inter-sectionality of socio-economic deprivation with other factors including ethnicity, linguistic background, social geography and anthropological mores. Methodological designs also vary from visual research methods, survey research, qualitative research interviews and evaluative case studies.

The symposium aims to make a contribution to the field of teacher education internationally in three ways: firstly, to contribute new research on poverty and teacher education, particularly knowledge of how student teachers conceptualise poverty and its educational effects; secondly, to offer new theoretical frameworks for researching the inter-connections between modes of teacher preparation, effective teaching and challenges to educational disadvantage; and thirdly, to contribute research-based ideas on how teacher preparation courses can support student teachers in their work with pupils living in poverty.

OECD (2006) Analysis of Educational Outcomes across the OECD Countries. Paris: OECD.