Living ‘poor’, learning ‘well’: Dewey’s pragmatic transactional approach for rethinking poverty and education

Abstract

Research and Policy on education and poverty tend to assign causality to “external” factors (i.e., family, peers, schooling) which impact young people’s educational outcomes and hence, become the focal point for moderating interventions. We argue that such ideas overlook the social complexity and fluidity of young people’s evolving lives. To better understand and respond to young people’s living and learning through poverty, we present a Deweyan-Pragmatist exploration of the evolving experiencing of a young person living poverty and associated adversity and yet “doing well” through schooling, one that focuses on a transactionally-oriented understanding of the human condition.