Poverty in Slovenia is becoming a growing problem. It often affects many areas of human life, but children are most vulnerable to negative impacts of it. This thesis presents the risk factors children coming from less stimulating environment due to poverty face daily and their impact on child's development. It specifically focuses on new findings, which define impact of poverty on the development of executive functions of children. We also present the theory of resiliency, which may be used as a framework for planning support for poor pupils, while including impact of the school system, to increase the impact of protective factors and reduce the impact of risk factors. Additional focus was put on the areas of subjective beliefs of teachers, factors which significantly affect the teacher’s practices when working with pupils from less stimulating environment due to poverty. In the research we investigate teacher’s knowledge of the impact of poverty on the development and learning of pupils, their belief in the development and teaching of pupils from less stimulating environment. We also collected the most effective forms of assistance, support and adjustments to group of pupils coming from less supporting environment due to poverty, as well as the most common barriers of integration and teaching these pupils. The sample included 100 primary school teachers in the region of Styria. Teachers highlight many obstacles they are facing, but they list many effective forms of assistance and support for the successful inclusion of pupils from less stimulating environment at the same time. Although results cannot be generalized for the entire Slovenian area due to research constraints, these findings offer good overview of the situation, highlight issues related to teaching pupils from less stimulating environment due to poverty and show us the gaps in education of teachers. These gaps have to be bridged by improving the education of teachers and by forming a better way of passing new information about development and effective support for children from less supportive environment due to poverty to teachers.
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