Teacher-Candidates' Poverty Perceptions

Abstract

Considerable attention has been paid to the education of the impoverished in the United States and great concern has been evinced regarding the preparation of teacher-candidates for the education of impoverished students. However, little systematic inquiry of an empirical nature exists upon which a theory of disadvantaged education might be constructed and by which the planning and administration of an effective program of disadvantaged education might be executed. The dearth of knowledge in this area is becoming increasingly apparent to educators involved in the education of disadvantaged students, as well as to researchers attempting to evaluate the impact of programs designed to combat the situation of such disadvantaged students. Havighurst and Levine, for example, write that ... teachers need to be unusually skilled and competent if they are to work successfully with disadvantaged students in the inner-city school and that the capabilities and attitudes of teachers are an even more important determinant of the achievement of disadvantaged students than is true in schools in which most of the pupils have been well prepared to succeed in the classroom. Yet, whereas teachers in middle-class schools have had two, three, or more years of relevant professional training for working with students in relatively favorable instructional situations, few teachers in the inner-city have had more than one or two courses which have given them any practical and concrete guidance for solving the much more difficult problems posed by the educationally disadvantaged student. Until such training is widely available, a large proportion of the billions of dollars being spent to improve educational opportunities in the inner-city school inevitably will be wastefully expended to finance inappropriate instruction; as a result it will be impossible to assess the limits of the gains which eventually might be made in raising achievement levels among disadvantaged students.'