Topic outline

  • The context: SES and its connection to educational achievement and opportunity

    Guiding questions

    • What is SES?
    • What is my own experience with SES? How did it affect my educational opportunities? How did those opportunities affect my SES?
    • What are the SES demographics in the US/Lenawee County?
    • What are achievement trends for low-income students?
    • What might be causes of this? What barriers do students face? (This will introduce the topic, with deeper exploration in Sessions 2-3.)

    Objectives

    Teachers will:

    • Describe ways SES is defined and structured in society.
    • Describe the relationship between SES and their own education.
    • Use data to assess trends in social mobility and inequality.
    • Use data to identify achievement trends for low-income students (Nationally? County-level?)
    • Based on existing knowledge, generate barriers faced by low-income students. 

  • Explaining inequality, poverty, and achievement trends of low SES students

    Guiding Questions:

    • How do I explain the educational outcomes of low-income students? What do I see as the causes?
    • Within education, what are the competing perspectives and explanations about inequality, poverty and achievement outcomes? (Focus: deficit- vs asset-based approaches)
    • What intervention strategies does each perspective suggest? Based on my observations in my school and wider research, what strategies are most frequently used with low-income students?
    • What evidence and assumptions are these explanations and interventions based on? (Ex: bootstrap explanation vs. examining structural inequalities)

    Objectives

    Teachers will:

    • Reflect on their own explanations of for SES inequalities.
    • Compare deficit- and asset-based perspectives and intervention strategies.
    • Compare the underlying assumptions of each perspective. (Ideally they will do a short reading--ahead of time if possible.)
    • Review national data on educational barriers for low-incomes students (e.g.low expectations, lack of access to resources and advanced courses, etc.).
    • Compare these stats with what is happening in teachers’ districts.
    •  Identify barriers that occur in teachers’ schools, and describe whether they reflect deficit or asset-based perspectives. 
    • Discuss the potential impacts of the different practices.
    • Practice “flipping the script” to turn deficit approaches into asset-based ones.

  • Strategies to support low-income learners

    Guiding Questions:

    •  Based on what we have learned, what interventions and teaching strategies best support low-income students? What does the research say?
    • What strategies can I apply to my own teaching?
                                  

    Objectives

    Teachers will:

    • Review research by John Hattie or other authors about interventions that make a difference 
    • Identify 1-2 strategies to apply to their own teaching.
    • Develop a way to assess the strategy.