Using Photovoice as a Teaching Tool to Explore Pre-service Teachers' Perceptions of Students from Impoverished Backgrounds

Abstract

Despite the diversity of the American student population, the current teacher force and cohorts of future teachers are overwhelmingly white women from middle class backgrounds. In addition to the work around race, gender, and disability status, there is a clear need for us to help future teachers reconsider how they think about children experiencing poverty in urban schools and communities. Based on its use in an elementary education foundations course, this article provides a first-person accounting of how the pedagogical tool photovoice helped future teachers critically reflect on their perceptions of students from these backgrounds and offered their professor entry points for knowledge and skill development related to teaching students living in impoverished backgrounds.