Following a literature analysis on research carried out by multiple authors concerning the correlation between poverty and learning, several findings were yielded. First, it was discovered that poverty causes societal issues such as security and health, which in turn affects student’s abilities to go to school, thus interfering with their learning process. Secondly, a review on medical research yielded that poverty affects the nutritional health of expectant and breastfeeding parents and also triggers child neglect due to ignorance on childcare or a lack of financial ability to cater for their needs. This may result in mental disabilities such as Mild Mental Retardation or even Learning Disabilities, thus affecting a child’s learning ability.
Additional findings related poverty to poor access to resources such as learning materials, schools and teachers. Unequitable resource distribution, it was discovered, limited the allocation of teachers, the construction of schools and provision of learning materials to poverty stricken regions, which curtailed the learning of children in such regions. A crucial aspect of the findings was the connection between poverty and the emotional and behavioural aspects of individuals. It was discovered that proper mastery and understanding of the relationship between the mentioned factors and poverty would go a long way in helping device mechanisms that would prevent and intervene on learning disabilities.
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"How Poverty Influences Learning".
One major limitation of the study was its single-dimensional aspect. The study only focused on understanding the relationship between poverty and learning without proper consideration on the causes of poverty itself. It is worth noting that understanding the major causes of poverty is itself an approach in understanding its relationship to learning. Contrary to popular opinion that poverty is only caused by economic and financial factors, poverty can also be caused by other dynamics such as cultural practices, religion, individual personality and even family background. An analysis of these factors would therefore have provided more insight how poverty affects learning.
Additionally, the study approached learning from an academic perspective by focusing on school education. Learning however begins immediately when a baby is born, and, therefore, the study should have stretched its scope to also cover Early Childhood Education (ECE), as part of learning. If the research could be redone, I would carry out a deeper analysis on how the different aspects of poverty (such as inherited and cultural factors), affect learning. Moreover, I would broaden the research to cover the scope of learning from ECE to higher institutional level.
Based on the findings, the study steers future research towards more investigation on the relationship between poverty and mental issues as a hindrance to learning. For instance, it was discovered that there lacks a well-defined framework that conceptualizes on the relationship between poverty and mental health, which leaves room for future research. Also, the findings point out the issue of unequal distribution of resources between well-developed and poverty ridden regions. Therefore research should be carried out to address how resource redistribution, characterised by construction of schools and reallocation of teachers and learning facilities, can be done in order to alleviate poverty and foster learning.
From the findings, I deduce that some learning challenges are beyond an individual’s control; attributed to their physical and social upbringing. Furthermore, I deduce that some of the learning disabilities are as a result of mental problems that could have been prevented if one was brought up in a well-off environment. Also, from the findings, I infer that learning disabilities, are a global issue and not a personal or communal one as I previously perceived. This is attributed to the discussed correlation between learning and poverty, the latter of which is already a global catastrophe. Concurrently, to answer the question on how poverty influences learning, I state that poverty interferes with one’s mental, behavioural, environmental and emotional aspects, thus affecting their ability and opportunity to learn.
