The objective of this presentation is to discuss the results of a research project on early childhood education teachers’ awareness of social classes and its consequences for their views on education, and in particular on the possibilities for pupils to change their social position.

Although there are attempts to talk about the death of classes (Mikiewicz, 2014: 43), the topic of class inequality is still relevant and debated, and educational inequalities are not decreasing (Blandford, 2017; Eribon, 2019; Kulz, 2017; McGarvey, 2017; Reay, 2017).

Bourdieu and Passeron's theory of socio-cultural reproduction speaks of the reproduction of the social class by the school system. Related to this is the division into inheritors, i.e. children from the upper classes who possess the qualities that the school system values, and les miracules, children from the lower classes who, despite objectively difficult conditions, experience social mobility (Kłoskowska, 2006: 25). This division is related to two modes of cultural acquisition: total learning and methodological learning. Total learning begins with primary socialisation and is followed up within schooling; in other words, it is early and imperceptible to the child. Methodological learning takes place as part of secondary socialisation and schooling. It is characteristic of pupils with a low-class background and is associated with uncertainty and difficulties in acquiring cultural competence, among other things required by teachers. In addition, pupils with a lower-class background have to deculturate, which is, de facto class eradication or liberation from what has been acquired during primary socialisation and is considered inappropriate by the school system (Bourdieu, 1984: 66-68).

Pupils entering school have different inherited capitals, yet the school does not seem to take this into account and treats pupils as if they all had the same starting position. As a result, children's knowledge and experiences other than those desired by the school are excluded (Grochalska, 2009: 63). According to Szkudlarek, pupils who have undergone total learning find it easier to find their way around the school requirements and use what they have already been equipped with at home (Szkudlarek, 2007: 35).

The different class backgrounds of pupils, and the different ways of acquiring culture, while promoting the culture of the privileged classes and excluding what is incompatible with it within the school system, leads to the differentiation of an individual's educational and life chances already at the earliest stages of education. By making the educational establishment culturally unfamiliar and inaccessible to pupils of low-class backgrounds, the school system, of which teachers are a part, contributes to the self-exclusion of pupils from the path leading to a change in life trajectory. At the same time, the neoliberal narrative seems to overlook the objective difficulties faced by pupils from underprivileged classes. Instead, it speaks of poverty of aspiration, laziness, and parental responsibility for the (poor) choices of educational institutions for their children (Hursh, 2014).

My aim was to explore early childhood education teachers’ openness to the pupils’ social mobility, their awareness of class differences and social inequalities, and ideas for overcoming them.  Teachers, along with pupils' resistance (Giroux, 2018), academic resilience (Smulczyk, 2019), and happy coincidences (Mikiewicz, Sadownik, 2014), are the factor that has a major impact on potential changes to pupils’ life situations. In my presentation, I will provide a preliminary typology of teachers' pedagogical convictions that contribute to either social reproduction or changes to pupils' social position.  

The empirical material that this presentation draws on comes from a research project in which I explored whether ECE teachers are aware of the existence of class divisions and whether this (un)awareness is visible in their work with pupils. 14 ECE teachers of varying seniority working in the Polish education system took part in the study. The teachers differed in terms of the geographical location of their schools (eight of them worked in large cities, two – in small towns, and four – in rural areas) and their experience with working in a class-diverse environment. Among those in large cities, teachers worked: in a school in a neighbourhood with a bad reputation (1); perceived to be affluent (4); in a socially diverse environment (2); both in a neighbourhood with a so-called bad reputation and also in a private school in a neighbourhood with an affluent location (1). Interviewees from small towns and villages had worked in areas with high economic deprivation (1), in a place that formed an enclave by being a private institution for parents with high economic capital (1) and in places that were so-called urban bedroom communities (2). Two did not define the location of their schools in social terms. I used the grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2009) and a bricolage of interpretive approaches in the research project (Kvale, 2012). The narrative and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The opening question during the narrative interview was about family relationships, especially from childhood and educational experiences up to the time the interviewee entered university. The semi-structured interview questions focused on four areas: the teacher's workplace, the teacher's vision of the child, the perception of pupils' educational opportunities, and social inequalities. Most of the interviews were conducted in two sessions, one for the narrative part, and the other for semi-structured. They lasted from 45 minutes to 2 hours. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The responses were coded inductively; the analysis itself was divided into two stages: the identification of teachers' awareness of social class and the analysis of teachers' private pedagogical theories, resulting in a middle-range theory of a preliminary typology of teachers' private pedagogical theories of the possibilities for pupils to change their social trajectories. The research was carried out in line with the principles of ethical research conduct, with consent obtained from all participants.

I aimed to establish whether ECE teachers identify the social inequalities experienced by pupils, caused by their families’ insufficient economic capital as well as the low level of cultural capital. My second aim was to analyze whether the social (un)awareness of social classes affects teachers’ attitudes towards their pupils. First of all, most of my interviews had an intuitive perception of the social class concept, but the class narrative was very limited. Based on the data collected, I distinguished two types of private pedagogical theories of the teachers who participated in my research. The first has emancipatory potential, while the second has adaptive character. Within the types of identified theories, I also distinguished a number of subtypes. Only two teachers’ narratives demonstrated the potential to change the social position of students, and among these, one theory was action-oriented, and the other one was reflection-oriented. Twelve teachers’ narratives had adaptive character. Among those, I distinguished six subtypes: of colonising helplessness character (4), soaking into the structure of the institution (2), upholding the social order (2), escaping the system (2), being in the service of the neoliberal narrative (1) and making educational change without social change (1). I distinguish one more private pedagogical theory, one which has critical potential but has not emerged during my research. This theory is present in literature (Blandford, 2017; McLaren, 2015; Reay, 2017). The results indicate that there might be little or no opportunity for pupils with low-class backgrounds to change their educational and social trajectories. While being one of the factors that can support pupils in making such change, the teachers in my research emerge as the guards of the social order with its social structure.

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