Child Poverty and Education: Philosophical Reflections seminar series

Seminar 5: Political and Policy Frameworks and Narratives about Child Poverty and Education

Date: Thursday13th May 2021

This seminar focused on the following questions:

  • How are education policy and practice shaped by debates on poverty and child poverty in particular?
  • How have policies in education supported or not supported children in poverty?
  • What is the role of narratives of poor families and children in shaping educational policy and practice, nationally and globally?
  • Have the voices of parents and children been considered in policy initiatives and related practices in education?

Elaine Unterhalter

Elaine Unterhalter is Professor of Education and International Development at UCL Institute of Education. She works on themes concerned with gender, race and class inequalities and their bearing on education. Her specialist interests are in the capability approach and human development and education in Africa, particularly South Africa.

Elaine is the author and editor of several books and papers on these themes. Her recent publications include Critical Reflections on Public Private Partnerships (co-edited with Jasmine Gideon, Routledge, 2020) and Education, Poverty and Global Goals for Gender Equality: How People Make Policy Happen (with Amy North, Routledge, 2017).

Elaine’s current concerns are with education, poverty and global social justice and this month she is launching an innovative framework for researchers and policy makers on how to engage with data to support change for gender equality in education.

Elaine Unterhalter, What do we talk about when we talk about children, poverty and education?

Judith Suissa

Judith Suissa is Professor of Philosophy of Education at UCL Institute of Education. Her work explores the intersections between political ideas and educational practice, particularly concerning the assumption of state schooling characteristic of much educational philosophy, theory and research, and the underlying political and moral assumptions of pedagogical relationships outside institutional forms of education.

Judith has written about parent-child relationships, educational experiments that challenge the state system, political education, and issues of belonging and identity.

Judith’s research draws on political and moral philosophy, particularly anarchist theory, theories of social justice and utopian theory. Her publications include Anarchism and Education; A Philosophical Perspective (Routledge, 2006) and (with Stefan Ramaekers) The Claims of Parenting (Springer, 2012).

Judith Suissa, Seeing and not seeing poverty; schools as sites of radical preconfiguration

Carl Emery

Carl Emery is a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, specialising in Poverty and Disadvantage and Social and Emotional Wellbeing. He has for the past 15 years worked on a range of schemes in this field, with particular emphasis on disengaged young people.

Carl’s experiences include contributing to the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme for DfEs, acting as a writer and consultant for the QCA on both the Personal Development curriculum and the Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills framework as well as being an advisor to the Welsh Assembly Government on the development of a national framework for young people’s social and emotional wellbeing.

Carl is the author of a number of teaching resources and publications in this field, including Children’s Social and Emotional Wellbeing (Emery, Watson and Bayliss, Policy Press, 2012).

Carl Emery, Local matters – Education, disadvantage and place

Arathi Sriprakash

Arathi Sriprakash is Professor of Education at the University of Bristol. She is a sociologist of education whose work focuses on the politics of social reform in and through education, and on how ‘education’ – whether an ideal, a practice, or an institution – can govern and contest matters of inequality and difference.

Arathi’s current research interests are in the racial politics of knowledge, particularly in the field of education and international development. She has conducted ethnographic research on education reform in the Indian and Australian contexts, and on state reforms of childhood and the family.

Ararthi’s publications include Pedagogies for Development: the politics and practice of child-centred education in India (Springer, 2012) and (edited with Lucy Hopkins) The ‘Poor Child’: the cultural politics of education, development and childhood (Routledge, 2016).

Arathi Sriprakash, Casteism and capitalism in approaches to early childhood education in india