Building Teacher Capacity for Educating Students Living in Poverty

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/ie.2025.423

Keywords:

improvement science, asset-based thinking, implicit bias, poverty, teacher-student differential

Abstract

Students living in poverty and/or experiencing childhood trauma consistently report suboptimal educational results nationwide. The primary focus of this improvement initiative was to build teacher capacity to understand their implicit bias and move from deficit to asset-based thinking in relation to students and families living in poverty. Employing Improvement Science Methodology at one rural elementary school, a 12-week, four-session professional learning module was delivered containing the following topics: teacher implicit bias and privilege; school discipline and special education data demonstrating disproportionate representation of students living in poverty; asset versus deficit thinking, Adverse Childhood Experiences and their impacts on education; and culturally responsive classroom practices. Findings demonstrated 13 out of 14 participants (92.86%) implemented new learning into classroom teaching practices yielding a 25% decline in referrals for special education testing for students living in poverty, and a 6.61% decline in out-of-class discipline for students living in poverty.

Author Biographies

Jaime Hooper, Western Carolina University

Dr. Jaime Hooper is an elementary principal in a rural school district with students living in poverty at rates greater than state and national averages. Dr. Hooper has held other positions in the district throughout her career including a classroom teacher, assistant principal, and federal programs director. As federal programs director, Dr. Hooper was responsible for program outcomes for students with disabilities, students at high academic risk, beginning teacher support, and homeless students. As principal, Dr. Hooper prioritizes instructional leadership to support educators, students, and their families to increase educational experiences and outcomes for students in a rural, high poverty elementary school. 

Heidi Von Dohlen, Western Carolina University

Heidi B. Von Dohlen, EdD, is an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership at Western Carolina University. She is the Program Director for the Masters of School Administration and Post Masters Certificate programs, and also teaches in the EdD program. She has served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and county office administrator in several states and countries. Throughout her career, she has advocated for marginalized students and families. Her research interests focus on preparing equity-centered school and district leaders, distributed leadership, ameliorating issues of poverty, and trauma-informed practices in public schools.

Emily Virtue, Western Carolina University

Dr. Emily Virtue is an Assistant Professor of Educational Research  and the Educational Leadership program director at Western Carolina University. Dr. Virtue has held various student affairs positions at different institutions of higher education and has been responsible for student wellness, activities, leadership development, retention, and community engagement. Her previous publications focus on pedagogical practices, supporting students in academic difficulty, and addressing systems that prevent student success in higher education. Her recent research with colleagues centers on asset-based pedagogical practices in middle and secondary settings.

References

Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2016). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. Bantam.

Blodgett, C., & Lanigan, J.D. (2018). The association between adverse childhood experience

(ACE) and school success in elementary school children. School Psychology Quarterly.

(1), 137-146.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2011). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the

contradictions of economic life. Haymarket Books.

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How

America’s schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press.

Carey, R. L., Yee, L. S., & DeMatthews, D. (2018). Power, penalty, and critical praxis:

Employing intersectionality in educator practices to achieve school equity. In The

Educational Forum. 82(1), 111-130. Routledge.

Craig, S. E. (2015). Trauma-sensitive schools: Learning communities transforming children's

lives, K 5. Teachers College Press.

Craig, S. E. (2016). The trauma-sensitive teacher. Educational Leadership, 74(1), 28-32.

Crosby, S. D., Howell, P., & Thomas, S. (2018). Social justice education through trauma-

informed teaching. Middle School Journal, 49(4), 15-23.

Ellis, W. R., & Dietz, W. H. (2017). A new framework for addressing adverse childhood and

community experiences: The building community resilience model. Academic Pediatrics,

(7), S86-S93.

Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., &

Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many

of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245-258.

Gaffney, C. (2019, Summer). When schools cause trauma. Teaching Tolerance, 62. Retrieved

from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2019/when-schools-cause-trauma

Goodman, R. D., Miller, M. D., & West-Olatunji, C. A. (2011). Traumatic stress, socioeconomic

status, and academic achievement among primary school students. Psychological

Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 4(3), 252-259.

Gorski, P. C. (2018). Reaching and teaching students in poverty: Strategies for erasing the

opportunity gap. Teachers College Press.

Gorski, P. C. (2008). The Myth of the “Culture of Poverty''. Educational Leadership, 65(7), 32-

Gorski, P. C. (2011). Unlearning deficit ideology and the scornful gaze: Thoughts on

authenticating the class discourse in education. Counterpoints, 402, 152-173.

Guskey, T. R. (2010). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and

Teaching: Theory and Practice, 8(3), 381-391.

hooks, B. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (2004).

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding

achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3-12.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2007). Pushing past the achievement gap: An essay on the language of deficit. The Journal of Negro Education, 76(3), 316-323.

Langley, G. J., Moen, R. D., Nolan, K. M., Nolan, T. W., Norman, C. L., & Provost, L. P.

(2009). The improvement guide: a practical approach to enhancing organizational

performance. John Wiley & Sons.

Larkin, H., Shields, J. J., & Anda, R. F. (2012). The health and social consequences of adverse

childhood experiences (ACE) across the lifespan: An introduction to prevention and

intervention in the community. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the

Community, 40(4), 263-270.

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370.

Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods

sourcebook.

National Center for Educational Statistics (2020). Characteristics of public school teachers.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_clr.pdf

National Center for Educational Statistics (2017). Teacher professional development: By

selected teacher and school characteristics 2011-12. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017200.pdf

Public School Forum of [state]. (2013). [State] Center for After School Programs Road

Map of Need 2013.

Public School Forum of [state]. (2019). [State] Center for After School Programs Road

Map of Need 2019.

Sacks, V., Murphey, D., & Moore, K. (2014). Adverse childhood experiences: National and

state-level prevalence (Research brief # 2014-28). Retrieved from

http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Brief-adverse-

childhood experiences FINAL. pdf.

Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage.

Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). Is everyone really equal?: An introduction to key concepts

in social justice education. Teachers College Press.

Souers, K., & Hall, P. (2016). Fostering resilient learners: Strategies for creating a trauma-

sensitive classroom. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

[State] School Report Card System (2019). Frederick County Schools.

[State] School Report Card System (2014). Frederick County Schools.

Theoharis, G., & Brooks, J. S. (Eds.). (2012). What every principal needs to know to create

equitable and excellent schools. Teachers College Press.

Theoharis, G., & Scanlan, M. (Eds.). (2020). Leadership for increasingly diverse schools.

Routledge.

Van Duzor, A. G. (2011). Capitalizing on teacher expertise: Motivations for contemplating

transfer from professional development to the classroom. Journal of Science Education

and Technology, 20(4), 363-374. doi: 10.1007/s10956-010-9258-z

Downloads

Published

2025-04-24

How to Cite

Hooper, J., Von Dohlen, H., & Virtue, E. (2025). Building Teacher Capacity for Educating Students Living in Poverty . Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice, 10(2), 49–58. https://doi.org/10.5195/ie.2025.423

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2025): Regular Issue

Section

Research Articles from Dissertations in Practice

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Jaime Hooper, Heidi Von Dohlen, Emily Virtue

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.