*Teachers' Beliefs about Poverty: A Barrier We Must Face DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102323*


#### **Table 6.**

*Topics and characteristics attributed to schools.*

#### **Figure 1.**

*Semantic network on the vulnerable school (own elaboration).*

certain conditions imposed by the educational system that has classified it as a vulnerable school. Thus, the socio-cultural environment - which is seen as a place plagued by vice, violence, and crime - determines the bad behavior of the students and the type of family context offered to them at home, which would be the continuity of the external context. These negative characteristics of the family would in turn be caused by their low educational and cultural level and by their inability to change their living conditions given their dysfunctional nature, which are often single-parent families. These latter factors would cause a low family commitment to school and to the education of their children, to whom they would provide very little emotional support, which would have repercussions in the socioemotional area and in the disposition towards learning, preventing them from achieving good educational results. On the other hand, certain school conditions such as the lack of resources and the impossibility of selecting their students, lead them to feel obliged to accept all students feeling without tools to solve the serious discipline problems, learning difficulties, and low motivation to learn that will probably lead students to drop out of school.

### **4. Discussion**

Our motivation for conducting this study was to find out whether there were differences in beliefs about poverty between teachers in vulnerable low and lowermiddle SES schools with high and low performance on the national SIMCE test. Our premise was that schools with good performance, despite being in vulnerable contexts, would have more positive beliefs than those with below-average scores. Contrary to what was predicted, our data show us that there is a shared narrative that evidences a negative evaluation of the environment in which they work, which would confront them with problematic children and families that would prevent them from reaching the standards required by current public policy. Our reflection in the following lines will try to stress the effect of accountability policies on teachers' tasks and identity by configuring performance scenarios in which they must act strategically in order to receive the prescribed rewards or punishments.

Although the contribution of the SEP Law in terms of financing cannot be ignored, since it has made it possible to acquire technological resources and pedagogical material for schools, in addition to hiring new support staff (psychologists, special educators, and education assistants), increasing teacher hiring and training hours [21, 22] and contracting external consultants [9], it must also be recognized that it has had undesirable consequences for many schools in contexts of poverty by making them more visible due to the demand to show good results in the short and medium term. These schools have been popularly labeled as "vulnerable schools", which has implied the exodus of non-priority students to more selective schools and a substantive increase in private education [2, 7].

Under the neoliberal model, schools are not only evaluated and ranked according to a competitive logic but are also considered to be comparable to each other [23]. Unfortunately, comparison and competition require that someone always be at the bottom of the ranking [24] and the public policies developed in the last 40 years have left the public school associated with poverty [25]. On the other hand, due to the many demands associated with the results, teachers feel that national tests have standardized and bureaucratized their work, leading them to perform arbitrary and useless tasks [25], which does not allow the development of critical thinking, selfevaluation, and accountability, nor will it motivate school improvement and innovative thinking [23]. Worst of all, trust is placed outside schools, in agencies that are not efficient in sharing useful information for teachers, disempowering them from their expert judgment about learning [24]. When teachers perceive that policies restrict their professional autonomy, in addition to intensifying and deprofessionalizing their work, they adopt strategies of resistance to reforms [5, 25] and will most likely develop narratives of self-defense [23].

A perverse effect of incentive policies that encourage competition between schools and teachers is that they have stimulated individualistic thinking and strategic behavior that enhances personal productivity [26]. This has led teachers to calculate their efforts and to act according to external standards in order to achieve a positive and profitable image [9]. Another powerful effect is seen in institutions, which create school narratives that can strategically eliminate, debate, highlight or obscure scores, ranking and position in the hierarchy, to generate a sense of institutional success, as well as to justify or separate themselves from their indicators of underperformance, transferring responsibility and assigned blame for failure onto others, such as students and their families [23] (pp. 756–757).

Consistent with our results, many studies at the national level have collected negative attributions of teachers towards families, which they consider "poorly constituted", "dysfunctional" or "violent" [25]. They complain that families are an obstacle to their children's education, as they do not attend meetings, do not support homework, and do not collaborate with punctuality on arrival [27]. In addition, they feel overloaded with work because they have to start from the bottom due to deficiencies in home education, taking care of basic needs and personal care (cleaning, clothing, food); affective needs (due to precariousness and lack, mistreatment, violence, and abuse) and basic rules of behavior (punctuality, respect for the turn, asking permission), as there is much permissiveness and loss of authority and, in addition, the whole family is involved in drugs or crime [27, 28].

In social comparison, groups are evaluated according to their social status as a respected/unrespected group and liked/disliked by others. They are likely to be evaluating families as low social status and disliked group. This group includes people who fail, who are seen as parasites and abusers of the system, such as vagrants and addicts in general, who arouse emotional reactions of disgust and contempt, which may lead to attacking or neglecting them because of the great discomfort they arouse [29].

Rojas and Leyton (2014) have found negative attitudes towards priority students. Teachers are upset because they believe that the special subsidy goes directly to the child and not to the school. They also show some resentment with priority students because they feel that the law transformed them into "untouchables" by being prevented from making them repeat the grade [21]. In addition, they feel that the priority classification makes them deserving of multiple welfare "handouts", which is detrimental to non-priority children whose families work very hard. In other cases, a paradox is observed, as priority students are both desired and rejected [27]. They are desired because they mean a significant increase in school admissions, but they are rejected because they produce enrollment leakage and teaching difficulties.

Teachers consider students as "others" who are different from them and that, due to their cultural legitimacy, it is their duty to "culturize" them. They see them as "problem" children, aggressive, uneducable, who do not adapt to the educational system, and who must be domesticated [30]. They also feel that they must put aside pedagogical aspects in order to provide affectivity, sociability, and quality of life to students, but they also think that they only go to school to eat and play [31]. They think that their children are always hungry and lack affection and that their learning difficulties are related to poor nutrition, dyslexia, dyslalia, and psychological disorders that should have been resolved at the preschool level. These disorders would produce cognitive disorganization, limiting their development in basic skills such as describing, comparing, relating, and understanding [32].

It has been found that teachers in low-performing schools attribute the results to the physical and intellectual conditions of their students, drug addiction, and conflicts in high-risk neighborhoods, and therefore see little possibility of change [33]. In a study on diversity, it was found that teachers classify their students into two broad categories according to the origin of their learning difficulties a) those diagnosed with clinical pictures of permanent or transitory learning difficulties and b) those socially vulnerable due to low family cultural capital, the presence of alcoholism and drug addiction, delinquency, the absence of parental figures, abandonment and prostitution [34]. Teachers feel that they work with the most disadvantaged population, with the "*Cacho* children", those whom nobody wants [23].

Using the social comparison model, students could be evaluated by teachers as a disrespected but likable group, which includes those who are considered less capable of managing their own lives because they have significant deficits or shortcomings, and for whom they feel pity, an ambivalent emotion that is both paternalistic and neglectful [29].

The effects of the policy of accountability have led to various consequences on teachers. On the one hand, it has technologized their work, deprofessionalizing it. On the other hand, it has aroused negative emotions such as fear of the permanent threat of closure of schools due to persistent underperformance [25]. But in the face of this bleak scenario, many turns to vocation to reaffirm their commitment to these schools [35] and raise their self-perception with a sense of sacrifice, altruism, and transcendence in their teaching action [25]. According to Assaél and Cornejo (2018), teachers feel trampled, repressed, and undervalued, but do not possess for the moment, a more elaborated reaction. In this becoming of subjectivities, many teachers wish that vocation begins to be part of the accountability mechanisms [25].

Unrest also stems from conditions that affect teachers' job stability. The ambiguity of neoliberal policies has increased "labor flexibility", making their work more precarious. For example, the Teachers' Statute allows termination of the contract or reduction of the working day with ease for the employer and the SEP Law reduced stability and hourly wages [26]. This has deepened the feeling of low valuation due to low salaries and work intensification, resulting in discomfort, anger, and fatigue [25]. Most teachers feel pressured and sued by these policies, in addition to feeling unfairly judged by society, because they appear to be responsible for the failure of the poorest students [5, 25, 36, 37].

According to Pascual Medina and Rodríguez Gómez (2018), subjects go through different levels as they become aware of power asymmetries [38]. These start from the first level of "submission" where "asymmetry" exists, but this is perceived as natural, given, and unmodifiable. A second level is "pre-critical" in which "inequality" is felt, in the face of which certain dissatisfaction and resentment begin to manifest themselves and explanations and causalities are sought. The third level would be "integrative criticism", in which one openly feels "injustice" and begins to analyze social reality with greater precision in order to propose actions for change. The last level would be "liberating criticism", in which after perceiving "oppression", the process of social transformation as such begins.

When considering the effects on the learning of the most disadvantaged students, accountability reduces the curriculum to the subjects measured by the standardized test, classes concentrate on rehearsing for the test, cultural and social diversity are considered as problems, and the integral education of students is renounced [24]. It is therefore paradoxical that the Chilean model is used as a reference of quality and an example of success at the international level [25].
