Abstract:

Paper presents a qualitative exploratory research about the topic of educational poverty, reframing this issue according to formal and informal settings of learning (CEDEFOP, 2009). In view of this, it intends to broaden the definition of this phenomenon, investigating professionals’ representations of it.
The literature attests multiple definitions of educational poverty. They concern the school context and school readiness.

According to the European Commission, it represents «the share of young people failing to reach minimum standards in education. These minimum standards can be related to their education attainment […] but also to education achievement» (European Commission, 2015, p. 18).

According to Save the Children, «educational poverty [is] a process that limits children’s right to education and deprives them of the opportunity to learn and develop the cognitive and non-cognitive skills they will need to succeed in a rapidly changing world» (Save the Children, 2016, p. 6).

In order to broaden the previous definitions, considering a deprivation of extra-curricula activities, a holistic case study (Yin, 2018) around the “Sulla Buona Strada” project has been held.

The project carries out recreational offers outside the schools; it promotes actions to enhance parental skills; it foresees the possibility to help children and their families with individual support, designed by social workers and teachers. The accompaniment includes both didactic help and pedagogical counselling with parents to improve family well-being.

This study implies a constructivist paradigm (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The truth from the research is context-sensitive, referring to the investigation’s specific geographical and professional background.

The aim of the inquiry is the transferability of the results to other similar contexts. A purposeful sampling is adopted: participants are professionals who work into the project and into the connected schools.

Data collection instruments are the following: 13 interviews; 3 focus groups; 4 action research meetings with a small group of professionals; 2 observation on the field. The collected information has been analysed using data analysis tools to investigate the textual content.
From data analysis, a broaden definition of educational poverty in qualitative and contextualized terms emerged. Educational poverty, in the light of the study, can be redefined in plural terms.

(1) There is an educational poverty that concerns the wider social context.
a) It is connected with the hyper-flexible and precarious society and the new forms of poverty.
b) It is connected with the fragility of adult figures.
(2) There is a poverty that concerns the impoverishment of the territory and of the agencies, services and other realities that help individuals.
a) It is connected with the impoverishment of the welfare state;
b) the complexity of the concept of community;
c) the critical interaction between school and extra-school.

This plural concept of educational poverty recalls the need to rethink pedagogically scholastic and extra-curricular contexts. It means that the professionals should work to implement synergic actions that contribute to the improvement of students on the didactic level, but also to the maintenance of global well-being in their context of origin.

This means:
1) To help adults to live the uncertainty of contemporaneity.
2) To imagine and act as the community can be a principal actor to educate children.

Keywords:

Educational poverty, informal settings, educational professions.