Need Help With 2 Disseration Assignments

EDD614ASSIGNMENTCASE3

Trident International University

James Newton

EDD 614

Assignment Case 3

Dr. James Hodges

February 24, 2020

“Impact of Poverty on the Education Success of Children”

Background

Education is one of the most fundamental rights across the world. However, access to education continues to vary cross different communities, cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Numerous studies have attempted to explore the causes of variations in access and successful educational outcomes across different groups of people. Riedi, Dawn and Kim (2017) state that learners with the capacity to deliver high academic performance exist in all income levels across the United States. Nonetheless, the success rates of learners from low-income backgrounds continue to be lower than their wealthy counterparts. While the dropout rates have reduced phenomenally from low-income neighborhoods, children from wealthy families still register the lowest dropout rates. Level of income coupled with gender factors may also play a role in school dropout rates or low academic performance for children from poor backgrounds. A longitudinal qualitative study undertaken by Ramanaik et al. (2018) found that for many poor families, girls’ domestic tasks came at the cost of schooling with greater concerns regarding the need to safeguard their sexual purity. Furthermore, with the rising desire of the girls’ educational and career goals, parents often encourage girls’ agencies to communicate openly both at home and in school. Children from poor households are also less motivated to work harder in school compared to their contemporaries from wealthy backgrounds. Friels (2016) observes that scholars have tried to make efforts towards exploring the influence of poverty on student success. According to Friels (2016), a combination of factors such as poverty, race and ethnicity have been the defining indicators of student academic attainment. For instance, African American children from low-income neighborhoods continue to face challenges such as low classroom attendance and dropout rates compared to their peers from financial stable backgrounds. In light of the above, this qualitative study will investigate the effects of poverty on educational success in children.

Research Problem

The indicators of academic achievements are often widely recognized across different sides of the scholarly divide. They include hard work, student competence and abilities, school culture, as well as teachers’ competencies. While these factors have been expansively identified and explored by scholars, one major area of research has often been overlooked: the extent to which poverty or level of income impacts educational outcomes for children. Renth, Buckley and Pucher (2015) observe that even though studies exist on this problematic area of knowledge, there have been minimal qualitative explorations on the influence of poverty on children’s educational outcomes. For instance, major qualitative issues such as perceived parental involvement and capacity, access tor sources and the role of schools, can be important pointers of academic performance and success for low income learners.

For more than a decade, poverty continues to remain the leading causes of unsuccessful educational outcomes for able students. According to Ferguson, Boivard and Mueller (2007), children from poor backgrounds normally begin school already behind or late compared to their peers from wealthy familial backgrounds as pointed out through metrics of school readiness. In particular, incidences, degree, length of time, as well as timing of poverty all play a role in a child’s educational outcomes, coupled with the nature of their communities and social networks. Nonetheless, both American and global efforts to reverse such trends have generated minimal outcomes. Furthermore, an expansive body of literature indicates that numerous factors interplay in varying ways, cultures and situations to generate levels of disparities, which ultimately adversely affect students’ academic accomplishments (Renth et al., 2015). Poor performance coupled with school dropout rates, often affect students’ success in their adult periods. For instance, children who drop out of school are less likely to secure well-paying professional jobs during their adulthoods. Therefore, this study will provide valuable insights into the influence of poverty and educational attainment with a keen focus on how such problems can be addressed.

Purpose

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the effects of poverty on education for children. The qualitative research will particularly use themes such as parents, teachers and students’ perceptions regarding the influence of poverty on students’ academic outcomes. The main research method that will be used to complete this study will be the interview method. There are various reasons why the interview method has been selected for the study. For instance, the qualitative research interview aims at identifying and describing the meanings of key themes in the life world of the subject. The major tasks that are related to interviewing is often to understand the meanings of what the interviewees often state. Furthermore, the qualitative interview will attempt to uncover both the denotative and connotative meanings of responses that will be provided by the respondents. This will be attained by examining nonverbal cues and their interrelationships with the verbal contents that will be provided by the respondents.

Theoretical Framework

The study will be guided by concepts from the human capital theory. For a long time, the human capital theory has been the overriding paradigm for socioeconomic progress that is placed on education progressively as a major sector to promote growth. According to the human capital theory, education plays an integral role in promoting socioeconomic growth and poverty reduction (Bonal, 2016). By improving children’s skills and capabilities, education becomes the privileged investment that can provide private and social returns. Therefore, increasing access to education for children from low-income families is a means for attaining economic growth in future and poverty reduction.

Research Questions

The research questions will be developed in order to provide guidance on hypothesis formulation and assessment of the variables. In so doing, the research questions will be instrumental in providing guidance to the study in ways that can generate a valid and reliable finding. More importantly, the research questions will be formulated as part of the ongoing phases of the research, including the unfolding lives and points of view of others on the area of knowledge that should be investigated. In light of the above, the list of research questions that will guide this study include:

1. What are the perceived effects of poverty on education success for children?

1. How does poverty influence academic performance for school students?

1. In what ways do students feel that poverty influence their education success?

Research Sub-questions

1. How does level of income increase dropout rates for students?

1. Does poverty increase school absenteeism rates?

1. Does poverty cause low school performance in terms of low grade?

Significance of the Study

This study will play an instrumental role in understanding the problem of poverty and educational performance. In particular, the qualitative study will provide insights into the perceived ways in which poverty deters children from generating their desired academic potentials. The study not only contributes to the understanding to this problematic area of research, but it is also going to be beneficial to educational leadership, students, and policymakers. At the educational leadership levels, the study can guide school administrators on developing interventions that can promote effective performance and success for low income learners. For instance, educational leaders who understand the income dynamics of educational success can use such knowledge to promote parental involvement in order to increase success. Moreover, educational leaders can focus on programs that are geared towards improving equity in school, because the rates of teacher-school collaborations and involvements are significantly among middle and upper class parents than in low-income families.

The results can also be used to by practitioners and educational leaders to explore the ways in which engagement can be increased among low-income learners. According to Jensen (2013), students from low-income families are more likely to struggle with the problem of engaging in class compared to their wealthier counterparts. This problem is especially linked to issues such as poor health and nutrition, low vocabularies, and efforts put in learning. Poor learners are less likely to engage in physical exercise, access healthy diets, and get appropriate and prompt medical focus. Moreover, such learners are less likely to be administered with appropriate medications and interventions. When such problems are compounded, they result in the overall reduction in engagement for learners. Educators and school administrators can address this problem by providing feeding programs in school and health services such as putting up of school dispensaries, clinics, and health facilities to support the health and nutritional needs of students. Addressing such challenges can significantly bridge the nutritional and health gaps that generate a lot of disparities in the performance between rich and poor students.

The proposed qualitative study can also support students to attain their desired learning outcomes in various ways. Williams, Greenlaf and Barnes (2018) note that both children and adolescents from low families mainly come from public schools across the country. As the number of learners form low-income household increases significantly, the achievement gaps between them and their richer peers increase. Understanding students’ perception of poverty and its impacts on their performance and educational success can help educators to design proper interventions to address their learning needs. Williams et al. (2018) state that understanding the major perceptions and themes that are common among students on the issue of poverty can help to improve their learning environment. For instance, most commonly mentioned issues that affect low income students include: establishing a culture of optimism, designing relationship networks, and putting in place meaningful and productive parent to school collaborations (Williams, Greenlaf & Barnes, 2018). Thus, the outcomes of such programs can encourage school instructors and counselors to work with students in serving them to gain positive attitude, optimism, and the spirit of hard work.

Further, knowledge on the relationship between poverty and educational success can help to identify resources that are critical in bridging the performance gaps between these two groups of learners. One such resource that is instrumental in bridging the performance gap is technological infrastructure. When children from low-income neighborhoods are given access to technologies as learning resources, they can be able to use such systems to access learning materials online, which they were otherwise unable to owing to inability to afford such books and contents. Rideout and Katz (2016) state that computers and online connectivity are increasingly becoming significant in ensuring that academic opportunities are open to all children, irrespective of their socioeconomic backgrounds. Thus, technological resources can enable learners to keep up with school home work and assignments and track and improve their grades.

Finally, the results of this study will be insightful to policymakers to develop both local and nationwide interventions to improve educational success for low-income learners. For instance, the focus of policymakers can be on strategies that can be employed to reduce poverty. Anti-poverty policies can go a long way in reducing neighboring poverty. Examples of such policies may include reducing disadvantages stemming from income and racial segregation, extending employment opportunities to low-income earners, and tackling problems such as exclusionary zoning (Quillian, 2017). These policies can significantly improve quality of life of students and their performance and productivity.

Research Method and Design

Qualitative case study design will be used to explore the effects of poverty on education success of children. In particular, Geronimo Elementary in Geronimo, Oklahoma will be used as a case study to explore the ways in which poverty affects children’s education. The descriptive case study will focus on describing how the phenomenon exists in different aspects of children’s life. As such, the case study will provide a comprehensive description in order to ensure that there is better understanding of the phenomenon. The outcome of the study will provide a ‘thick ‘description of the relationship between poverty and education success for children. ‘Thick’ description is a concept that refers to the holistic literal description of the research problem that is being explored. The case study approach is appropriate for this study since the research is exploratory in nature. More precisely, the case study design is appropriate for exploratory assessments when exploring contemporary issues, within their real-life contexts. The proposed design is especially appropriate when boundaries between the phenomena and the context are not clear. Moreover, the case study approach is recommended when seeking to understand the dynamics presented within single settings, and when existing theories seem insufficient (Marshall & Rossman, 2014). Furthermore, the case study approach provides room for flexible and opportunistic information gathering tools that allow additions to questions during interviews more than any other model. As such, case study offers the greatest potential for revealing richness, holism, and complexity in events.

Research Site or Population

The study will be conducted in Geronimo Elementary School in Geronimo, Oklahoma. Geronimo Elementary School is a public learning institution that has approximately 183 learners in grades PK and K-6. Being a public school, Geronimo has learners drawn from different demographic groups, including blacks, whites, and Latinos. The school comprises populations that will be ideal for this study, because some learners are from wealthy backgrounds while others are from poor households. Teachers also have a record of learners, their socioeconomic backgrounds, and individual performance. Therefore, Geronimo has been selected as an ideal site for the study.

Population and Sample

A total of 20 people will be selected to participate in the study. The main sampling procedure that will be used to select participants is stratified random sampling. The significance of stratified random sampling rests in its generality. For many important categories, approximate answers whose errors are small in statistical perspectives can be effectively gathered through execution of the query over an appropriately derived random sample. Stratified random sampling offers the flexibility to emphasize some strata over others through controlling of the allocation of sample sizes. The target population will be subdivided into groups, after which random sampling approaches will be applied to each subpopulation to form a test group. Examples of such subgroups will include: boys, girls, teachers, rich children, and poor children. The random sampling of each population will be done on the basis of representation within the population as a whole. Stratified random sampling accurately reflects the population that is being studied, since the researchers are categorizing the whole population before applying random sampling procedures (Nguyen et al., 2019). Therefore, stratified random sampling provides effective coverage of the study population because it enables the researcher to gain control over the subgroups. This step ensures that all groups are well represented in the sample.

Instrumentation

Interviews will be used as the main research instruments for the study. The process of administering interviews for the study will include drafting the interview, piloting the questions, selecting the interviewees, and conducting the interview. The interview development process will begin be widely indicating the questions that should be asked. In particular, semi-structured interviews will be developed to guide the process of gathering data. Semi-structured interviews will have structured elements accompanied by sufficient flexibility to provide the respondents with the opportunity to share the flow of information. The interview questions will undergo a piloting process in order to identify and rectify potential imperfections. For instance, the questions will be carefully be tested with a few people in order to determine their levels of clarity. For instance, the interview questions will be carefully crafted by structuring the instruments around key themes or subject areas, such as absenteeism and lack of learning materials. Piloting will be significant in eliminating ambiguous questions and generating useful feedback on the structure and flow of the intended interview. Thereafter, a group of interviewees will be selected to participate in the study.

Document Analysis

The data gathered will be analyzed using thematic analysis technique. The document analysis will be undertaken through systematic coding and grouping of different themes for easy assessment of large about of textual data. Thematic analysis can help to understand key themes and issues that are relevant to the research topic (Vaismoradi, Turunen & Bondas, 2013).The outcome of the document analysis process will include unobtrusive determination of trends and patterns of words utilized, their frequency, their relationships, and the structures and discourses of communication. The objective of document analysis will be to describe the nature of the document’s content by assessing who said what, to whom, and with what impact.

The document analysis will be suitable in answering questions such as what are the education issues that affect children from poor backgrounds. In particular, document analysis will be well-suited to assess the multifaceted, important, and sensible phenomena related to poverty and education. Therefore, the document analysis method that has been selected will be suitable for undertaking simple reporting of common issues that have been mentioned in the data. The analysis process will contribute to the central understanding of the phenomena. According to Buch and Deutsch (2014), school facilities face structural insufficiencies that adversely affect the quality of instruction. The document analysis will illuminate this problem by identifying relevant themes related to structural challenges such as poverty. Moreover, Ellis et al. (2018) state that researchers often overlook teachers’ perceptions on the influence of poverty on academic achievements. The documentation analysis will help explore this issue by understanding the key themes that will emerge as a result of the data collected.

There are various ways in which validity and reliability will be addressed through document analysis. For instance, a team-based instrument will be developed, followed by a pretest. Involving the whole research team in the steps of the instrument development process can increase reliability by familiarizing them with the connections between research objectives and the document analysis procedure (Guest, MacQueen & Namey, 2011). Additionally, pretesting the document analysis process increases validity by ensuring that the questions and analysis make sense. Validity and reliability will also be increased by transcribing data using transcription protocol. The transcription process provides verbatim account of data gathering events, hence improving validity. The utilization of a transcription protocol goes a long way in ensuring that the transcription is undertaken consistently and is of the appropriate form for the analytic purposes (Guest et al., 2011 Further, validity will be enhanced during analysis by putting in place translation expectations at the start. Translation approaches and styles often differ significantly. Therefore, putting in place translation approach before the study commences increases the possibility that the data will be important for the analysis planned.

References

Bonal, X. (2016). Education, poverty, and the “missing link”: The limits of human capital theory

as a paradigm for poverty reduction. The handbook of global education policy, 97-110.

Cross, J. R., Frazier, A. D., Kim, M., & Cross, T. L. (2018). A comparison of perceptions of

barriers to academic success among high-ability students from high-and low-income

groups: Exposing poverty of a different kind. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62(1), 111-129.

Ferguson, H. B., Bovaird, S., & Mueller, M. P. (2007). The impact of poverty on educational

outcomes for children. Paediatrics & child health, 12(8), 701-706.

Friels, A. C. (2016). Motivation Towards Success: A Qualitative Comparative Case Study

Illustrating The Differences In Motivating Factors In Achievement Between Low Ses

High Achieving and Low Achieving African American High School Females.

Jensen, E. (2013). How poverty affects classroom engagement. Educational Leadership, 70(8),

24-30.

Quillian, L. (2017). Poverty, neighborhood, and school setting. Focus, 33(2), 22-28.

Ramanaik, S., Collumbien, M., Prakash, R., Howard-Merrill, L., Thalinja, R., Javalkar, P., ... &

Moses, S. (2018). Education, poverty and" purity" in the context of adolescent girls'

secondary school retention and dropout: A qualitative study from Karnataka, southern

India. PloS one, 13(9).

Renth, B. A., Buckley, P., & Puchner, L. (2015). Academic Performance Gaps and Family

Income in a Rural Elementary School: Perceptions of Low-Income Parents. Education

Leadership Review of Doctoral Research, 2(1), 70-84.

Rideout, V., & Katz, V. S. (2016). Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-

Income Families. In Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Joan Ganz Cooney

Center at Sesame Workshop. 1900 Broadway, New York, NY 10023.

Buck, R., & Deutsch, J. (2014). Effects of poverty on education. Journal of Human

Sciences, 11(2), 1139-1148.

Ellis, S., Thompson, I., McNicholl, J., & Thomson, J. (2016). Student teachers’ perceptions of

the effects of poverty on learners’ educational attainment and well-being: perspectives

from England and Scotland. Journal of Education for tEaching, 42(4), 483-499.

Guest, G., MacQueen, K. M., & Namey, E. E. (2011). Applied thematic analysis. Boston: Sage

Publications.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2014). Designing qualitative research. Boston: Sage

publications.

Nguyen, T. D., Shih, M. H., Srivastava, D., Tirthapura, S., & Xu, B. (2019). Stratified Random

Sampling from Streaming and Stored Data. Proceedings of the 22nd International

Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT)

Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic analysis:

Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & health

sciences, 15(3), 398-405.