Breaking Light on Economic Divide: How Elementary School Teachers Locate Class Inequality in Teaching and Schools

Abstract

Background/Context: Macro-analyses have documented the raced and classed consequences of rampant economic inequality in schools and society. However, in educational research, there remain clear gaps in understanding how schoolteachers, especially those working with children, locate the appearances of economic inequality in their teaching and how they make sense of the social conditions that create such disparities. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Key to understanding how economic inequality matters in the classroom is acknowledging teachers as critical to disrupting classist relations, cultivating critical awareness, and advocating on behalf of and in solidarity with those who face the brunt of ongoing systems of racial capitalism and coloniality. Equally critical is how the role of teaching can challenge the neoliberal belief that market principles are the best and only way to shape the impending future. To that end, the purpose of this project was to analyze the process of elementary school teachers in New York City as they materialize a more robust understanding of class formation as a part of lived experience and to advance new possibilities for harnessing the teaching of economics as a means toward racial and social justice. Research Design: As part of this larger project, we asked 57 New York City teachers in grades 1–5 to share responses to Likert and open-ended questions, and analyzed a subset of data along two primary lines of inquiry: In what ways does social class appear in your classroom? Describe a moment in your classroom or school when social class mattered. Through a constructivist grounded analysis, we surfaced four overlapping locations: (1) disparities in material possessions and access among students; (2) tensions between teachers, parents, and families; (3) inequalities built into school-based structures and practices; and (4) teachers’ own subjective histories with social class. Conclusions/Recommendations: Given the dearth of scholarship in this area, particularly at the elementary level, we argue for greater attention to the experiences of teachers as they work within institutions marred by racial capitalist society. Elementary school teachers are keenly aware of how material infrastructures and the extraction of value in and through education present grave inequalities for their students and families. They express genuine interest in deepening their understanding of economic inequality and for spaces to explore ways in which they can respond to the everyday events they shared in this study.