Teachers' Methodology for Capturing “Poverty”

Focusing on the Practice of Adapting Concepts of Self and Other

Abstract

Since the late 2000s, child poverty has become a significant focus, prompting increased attention on supporting poor children. Teachers, positioned as important actors in addressing these issues, are tasked with swiftly identifying and supporting children in poverty. However, the sociology of education often overlooks how teachers identify children as being poor. Furthermore, while teacher hierarchy has been suggested as a factor contributing to the exclusion of poor students, most studies are speculative and lack empirical data. Therefore, this study examined the practices of self-identifying as someone in poverty and recognizing others as poor from the standpoint of an ethnomethodological conceptual analysis. A case study approach was employed, using interview data from an elementary school teacher who presented herself as having experienced poverty.

The findings revealed that when presenting oneself as a party to “poverty,” the connection between the concept of poverty and the concept of household makes it difficult to delineate the boundaries of the party to poverty. In addition, in identifying poverty as a teacher, it was noted that the teacher's duties as a teacher are also limited by his/her association with the household.