ABSTRACT
The education systems of many affl uent countries contain a paradox. Although education is seen as the way out of poverty, learners from poorer backgrounds consistently do badly in the education system. International data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries shows that this is a widespread problem with deprivation having a negative impact on attainment across all OECD countries (OECD, 2008 a&b). This enduring challenge has led affl uent countries, in their different ways and based on different types of research, to advocate particular policies and implement a plethora of targeted ‘magic bullet’ intervention strategies to deal with the challenge. Growing evidence, however, suggests that these interventions have, in large measure, failed to deliver systemic change and greater equity in terms of educational outcomes. Although there is widespread agreement that poverty and poor educational outcomes are related, there are competing explanations as to why that should be the case. This is a major problem for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers who are looking for pointers to action, or straightforward ways of understanding an issue that troubles education systems across the world. The situation is made more problematic because there are competing explanations and a plurality of positions that researchers have taken with regards to the fi eld of education and poverty. Put simply, researchers often work in domains within the fi eld that share a similar set of philosophical assumptions, whilst practitioners and policy makers too often reach for the action that is closest to hand, without considering its underlying assumptions about why and how poverty impacts on educational outcomes. As a result, the competing explanations of the poverty-education link have rarely been categorised and synthesised. The purpose of this book is to provide within one text a mapping framework
for organising these disparate competing explanations, perspectives, and positions. Hence the book provides an opportunity for multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective researchers to respond to the issues at hand in ways that provide a deeper and more critically diverse set of explanations. What we hope this provides researchers and policy makers is a framework of explanations that can be examined in the light of any particular perspective, position, or viewpoint that might be held-a set of ideas against which practice, policy, and theory might be explored and extended. The mapping framework and expert voices contained in the book emanate from a research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as part of their Education and Poverty Programme. This project enabled the editors of the book to undertake a review of the fi eld and to invite internationally renowned academics to seminars to discuss and develop our review. We then asked them to develop their own detailed thinking about the link between education and poverty that made reference to our review. As part of the project we also developed some initial thinking about the implications of our review for educational policy. The book is the culmination of this project and it is hoped that our coherent synthesis of explanations, with detailed examples of particular perspectives and approaches that link to policy in the UK, US, and beyond, provide a depth of understanding that will transcend time and be as relevant to understanding future educational interventions and changes in government as we hope it does now. It is perhaps the fi rst time that such a major and signifi cant task has been undertaken, and we hope it will be widely used over time and to inform new studies and policy making.
