Education and child poverty in times of austerity in Portugal: implications for teachers and teacher education

Abstract In recent years Portugal has experienced a severe financial and economic crisis, with implications for all sectors of society, particularly education. Salary cuts, high rates of unemployment, high taxation and worsening career progression are just some ways in which the teaching profession has been affected. Recent policy changes have also impacted on initial teacher education. This paper gives a brief characterisation of the emerging picture within the context of crisis, drawing on data from continuing research on the effects of poverty on teaching and teacher education. It looks at student teachers’ experiences during practicum in regard to issues of poverty at school, as well as the ways in which poverty is framed and discussed during their initial teacher preparation. Key findings point to student teachers’ perceptions about poverty and its impact on children’s well-being and equal opportunities; the strategies they employ to deal with poverty at school; and the complex role of the teacher in promoting equity and social justice through facilitating access to powerful knowledge for all children. Implications for teacher education are discussed, particularly the need to foster social and cultural dimensions of teacher education.


Introduction
Over the last few years Portugal has gone through a severe financial and economic crisis, with implications for all sectors of society. Austerity measures have been intensified since the implementation of the memorandum of understanding with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission (known as the Troika). These measures have greatly affected people's lives, in terms of unemployment, low income, high taxation, poverty and inequalities, as well as through their impact on social protection, health and education. Thus, alongside the financial and economic downturn, a social crisis has also become apparent.
In the education sector, salary cuts, high rates of unemployment, high taxation and worsening opportunities for career progression are just a few examples of the ways in which the teaching profession has been affected. Recent research, for instance, has demonstrated the increase in bureaucracy and the low morale of the teaching workforce (Flores 2014a). The goal of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a brief characterisation of Portugal's education sector, the emerging context of crisis and the austerity measures that have affected schools and teachers' work and education; and second, to look at preliminary findings from continuing research on the effects of poverty on teaching and teacher education. In particular, the paper focuses on student-teachers' experiences during practicum in regard to issues of poverty at school, and the ways in which poverty is framed and discussed during their initial preparation.

Economic crisis, austerity measures and child poverty in Portugal
Portugal was one of the 12 countries most affected by the world recession (unICEF 2014). The impact has been visible in the deterioration of the situation of families, and this has been mostly related to job losses, underemployment, higher taxes and cuts in social transfers and public services which occurred between 2008 and 2012. The intervention of the Troika in 2011 led to worsening living conditions and an increase in poverty. Alongside this was the growing emigration of qualified young Portuguese people, due to the lack of employment. data from Eurostat, issued in June 2015, indicate that Portugal had the fifth highest rate of unemployment among young people in the European union. The rate increased from 7.6% in 2008 to 13.2% in 2015. long-term emigration from Portugal, a country with around 10.5 million inhabitants, increased with the recession. According to a recent report (Pires et al. 2014), on an average, around 80,000 people per year left Portugal between 2007 and2012. In 2013, the number increased to 110,000 people, including a huge number of young qualified people.
In 2012, roughly a quarter of Portugal's population were 'at risk' of poverty or social exclusion, according to Eurostat data (Eu 2014). In 2011, the Portuguese government cut public sector wages, increased taxes and slashed spending on social welfare programmes that provided social security benefits. Austerity measures were adopted as part of a larger goal to reduce the national deficit below 5.9%. Although successful in reducing the deficit, the austerity measures severely harmed the status of the Portuguese workforce and those in need of public support. Between 2008 and 2012, the proportion of children aged 17 or less who were living in jobless households nearly doubled in Portugal and Spain (unICEF 2014).
Throughout the country many social canteens were created within the context of the government's programme of 'food emergency' . In the first half of the year of 2015, around 8.6 million meals were served. In partnerships with Mayors, local authorities and parents' associations, schools have also reinforced the social support to children and their families, by keeping school canteens open during summer holidays to provide children with 'the only full hot meal' (www.jn.pt/PaginaInicial/nacional/Interior.aspx?content_id=4731106).
Portugal has one of the most unequal income distributions in Europe, and poverty levels are high (OECd 2014). There had been a long-term gradual decline in both inequality and poverty, but the economic crisis has halted this. The number of poor households is rising, with children and young people being particularly affected. unemployment has impacted on the risk of poverty (40.5%) and on social exclusion (25.7%). The risk of child poverty among families experiencing unemployment was higher than for the rest of the population.
The effects of the financial and economic crisis on education have been clearly visible (InE-Portugal 2015). Children have been at higher risk of poverty and social exclusion than any other population group (since 2010), and they have been the most affected by the increase in poverty and social exclusion. The risk of poverty for children is inversely proportionate to their parents' level of schooling. Child poverty is lower where parents have higher levels of schooling: 37.5% for those whose parents have not completed at least secondary education; 14.1% for those whose parents concluded secondary or post-secondary education (non-higher education) and 4.1% for those whose parents held higher qualifications.
despite the important progress made by Portugal over the last three decades following entry to the then European Economic Community, existing performance data related to education are still below the average of the Eu. For example, 40% of 25-64-year-olds have completed at least the secondary education in Portugal, compared with 75.2% in Eu. The school dropout rate for 18-and 24-year olds is 19.2 and 11.9%, respectively (PORdATA 2014). In Portugal, the 'new Opportunities' programme was launched in 2005 to provide individuals who left school with a second opportunity to do their studies, and to assist those in the labour force who wanted to acquire further qualifications. As a result of this initiative, graduation rates rose by more than 40% between 2008 and 2010. In 2010, more than 40% of the students concerned were older than 25 (OECd 2014). In 2011, however, the Ministry of Education abolished the programme, citing among other reasons, concerns related to how competencies were certified.
The work of schools and teachers is now greatly influenced not only by the need to educate children, but also by social issues, especially by the alarming dimension of poverty and the greater social intervention demands.

The education sector in a context of crisis
According to a recent report, 'The State of Education in a State under an intervention programme' (Benavente et al. 2014), the budget for education in Portugal increased from 1.4% of the gross domestic product (gdP) in 1972, to 4.6% in 1995 and 5.7% in 1998. Currently, it is around 3.8%, one of the lowest in the Eu. The report characterises the changes in the education sector after 2011 as follows: (i) increased number of pupils per class; (ii) return to selecting pupils through national exams at all levels of schooling, in order to guide some to vocational programmes; (iii) increased workload for teachers; (iv) reduced staffing levels, especially related to the school curriculum restructuring leading to the disappearance of cross-disciplinary areas (e.g. project work) and school support for pupils. This situation has led to 151% increase in teacher unemployment compared to 2011; (v) creation of mega-clusters of schools (a number of schools in a given municipality that federated under the leadership of one principal); (vi) promotion of school rankings based on national exams; (vii) reinforcement of so-called key subjects, such as Portuguese and Maths; (viii) abolition of transversal (areas that are covered by any teacher such as education for citizenship, Portuguese) and cross-curricular areas such as study under guidance (support for pupils to study at school) and project area (project work done by pupils and teachers without a given list of contents to be covered); and (ix) reduced attention given to subjects such as physical education, artistic education, civic education and health education.
The teaching workforce has lost more than 30,000 jobs (www.dn.pt/inicio/portugal/interior.aspx?content_id=3417596) and is now the profession with the highest level of unemployment, with 26.4% of teachers registered as unemployed and looking for jobs (based on IEFP official data in August 2012, in the subsequent years IEFP did not disclose data). Teachers' salaries have also been reduced, alongside an increased workload and worsening working conditions (see Flores, Ferreira, and Parente 2014). Research has demonstrated the intensification of teachers' work, the increase in bureaucracy and the low morale of the teaching workforce (Flores 2014a). In a recent nationwide survey (n = 2702), the majority of teachers (61.6%) admitted that their motivation had decreased in the three years since 2012 (Flores, Viana, and Ferreira 2014). The majority of the teachers participating in the study (96.7%) claimed that teachers' workloads had increased over the past three years, that there was a greater control over their work (75.6%), that there was an increase in teachers' public accountability (74.6%), and an accentuation of criticism of teachers (92.2%). Respondents blamed, to a great extent, the role of the media in the deterioration of the public image of teaching and teachers.
At the same time, more pressure has been put on schools and teachers to increase student attainment, as a result of concerns with national and international assessment programmes. Issues of accountability and performativity have been identified in some recent policy initiatives, especially those related to school internal and external evaluation, teacher evaluation and pupil assessment, with particular emphasis on national exams for new entrants into the teaching profession, and for pupils in year 4, year 6 and year 9 in Portuguese and Maths.
Alongside these developments, a number of policy initiatives have been introduced in order to deal with the complex demands of school life as a result of the financial, economic and social crisis. Since 2012, emergency and compensatory policies, programmes and measures have been put in place by the Ministry of Education, such as: (i) the definition of 'learning goals' in pre-school; (ii) the development of the third generation of TEIP (the so-called Educational Territory of Priority Intervention, TEIP 3), in order to deal with policies for priority education in socially and economically deprived areas where dropout rates are above the national average (in total, 16% of Portuguese schools benefit from this government programme); (iii) the 'Alternative Curriculum Paths' aimed at pupils in elementary education who experience learning difficulties, recurrent academic failure, risk of social exclusion and/ or school dropout; (iv) the 'Integrated Programme for Education and Training' which is a socio-educational policy initiative aimed at the inclusion, in a transitional way, of young people aged 15-18 who are at risk of social and/or school exclusion; (v) the school programme for 'Food Reinforcement' (PERA Portugal, Ministério da Educação e Ciência 2012) which aims to provide pupils in need with a meal in the morning (around 14,000 and 12,000 pupils benefited from this programme in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, respectively); and (vi) The 'Education and Training Programmes' aimed at 15-25-year olds and adults (18 years or above) which seek to deal with school dropout and school failure, to support pupils at risk of leaving school, to reintegrate those who have given up school and to consolidate school training with double certificates (vocational and academic) at the level of secondary education.
It is therefore important to analyse the ways in which teacher education, particularly the practicum, is responding to the challenges posed by these policy changes and the complex social and economic context, and this can be done through considering student teachers' perspectives.

Initial teacher education (ITE) in the post-bologna context in Portugal
like many European countries, Portugal has undergone a restructuring of ITE programmes as a result of the implementation of the Bologna process. According to the legal framework (decree-law n° 43/2007), the professional qualifications for teaching (from preschool to secondary education) are to be based on a number of key elements: (i) a higher professional qualification for teachers (at a second cycle level, i.e. Master's degree); (ii) a curriculum based on leaning outcomes in the light of teacher performance; (iii) a research-based qualification; (iv) the importance of practicum (observation and collaboration in teaching situations under the supervision of a mentor/supervisor); (v) school-university partnerships; and (vi) the quality assurance of teachers' qualification and of initial teacher education (Ministério da Educação 2007). Thus, in order to become a teacher, a three-year degree (licenciatura) is needed, plus a Master's degree in teaching (usually a two-year programme). This implies a separation between training in the first cycle (licenciatura) and training at second cycle level (master's degree). In 2014, a new legal framework for ITE in Portugal was published (decreelaw n° 79/2014) which includes the following curriculum components: (i) training in the subject matter; (ii) general educational training; (iii) specific didactics (for a given level of teaching and subject matter); (iv) cultural, social and ethical education; and (v) professional practice. however, the cultural, social and ethical education component receives no specific credits.
The new configuration, within the context of a consecutive model, has been seen as a drawback in relation to previous models of teacher education. (Previously, the so-called integrated model included four to five years of training in which student-teachers would benefit from training in educational sciences and subject matter simultaneously from the very beginning of the course, plus one year of practicum in a school.) The new model is based on a more fragmented curriculum through different courses in every semester, some of them subdivided into modules, often as a result of academic disputes over disciplinary territories. This model emphasises subject knowledge and didactics, which implies that the professional practice occurs more at universities with less time spent in schools (e.g. Flores 2011;2014b;Flores 2016;Flores et al. 2016). This trend towards academisation is evident elsewhere in Europe as ITE shifts focus from practical skills towards academic meritocracy (Ek et al. 2013). however, in other European countries and elsewhere, ITE has followed the opposite trend (see, for instance, the uK and the uSA).
By and large, recent policy changes have impacted upon ITE, in terms of curriculum and knowledge fragmentation, and an emphasis on the didactics component, making it difficult to focus on the wider social and cultural problems in which teachers work. It is also important to note that in Portugal teacher surplus and unemployment became intertwined realities, with implications for the recruitment of student-teachers in higher education institutions and for new teachers' job expectations.

Methods
This paper reports on data drawn from continuing research on the effects of child poverty on teaching and teacher education in a context of social and economic crisis. It addresses the following research questions: how do student-teachers look at poverty and its effects on pupils and schools during practicum? What kinds of poverty situations do they describe? What do they learn from their practicum experience, particularly in regard to strategies to deal with poverty? how does ITE address poverty?
Student-teachers enrolled in ITE programmes for preschool and primary schools were invited to participate in the project. nineteen volunteered for the study, out of a total of 24 students enrolled in the Master's degree for preschool teaching and 28 enrolled in the preschool and primary school programme. All were female and their ages ranged from 21 to 24 years. Eleven were studying for a Master's degree in preschool and 7 a Master's degree in both preschool and primary school.
none of the researchers taught in these programmes. One of the researchers asked the directors of the Master's degree programmes for permission to invite the students to participate in the study and to obtain informed consent. data were collected during a seminar at the university in May 2015.
Student-teachers were asked to complete a two-page written narrative focusing on a number of questions that sought to explore their beliefs, conceptions and experiences of poverty during their practicum at first-degree level (initiation to professional practice) and at Master's degree level (supervised teaching practice). during practicum student-teachers have the opportunity to observe and to teach a number of lessons under the supervision of a cooperating teacher and a university supervisor. Written narratives are powerful in providing participants with the opportunity to reflect on their learning experiences, as well as to raise awareness and promote reflection on beliefs and implicit theories, and to make sense of their own experience (Elliott 2005). Through these narrative accounts the participants were invited to look back on specific moments or situations, and the learning from them, through a process of meaning-making (hollway and Jefferson 2000;Elliott 2005). This is particularly relevant within the context of teacher education, and in this case after practicum. Issues of time and space and the social context (Clandinin, Pushor, and Orr 2007) are in this regard of paramount importance. data analysis was undertaken according to two phases. The first phase was a vertical analysis (Miles and huberman 1994), according to which each of the respondents' accounts was analysed separately. The second phase included a comparative or horizontal analysis (cross-case analysis) (Miles and huberman 1994) during which the method of 'constant comparative analysis' (glaser and Strauss 1967) was used to look for common similarities as well as differences. Coding was carried our according to semantic criteria and emerging categories were identified from the accounts and were validated by both researchers.

Findings
In this section, findings arising from student-teachers' accounts are presented, according to the main emerging themes: (i) student-teachers' perceptions of poverty and its impact on children's well-being; (ii) strategies to deal with poverty at school; (iii) teachers' complex role in a context of crisis: promoting equity and social justice; (iv) ITE and the need to pay attention to the social and cultural dimension of teaching.

Student-teachers' perceptions of poverty and its impact on children's well-being
In their accounts student-teachers spoke of the ways in which they perceived poverty during their practicum in kindergarten and preschools. Most of them talked about situations of poverty which they observed during practicum. They illustrated their perceptions by describing concrete situations that had an impact on them, and they also identified the effects of the economic crisis on children's life and well-being: Poverty in schools is actually a very critical issue that worries me because it influences the ways in which children learn and relate to other people. (MEP1CEB 4) Poverty, in many cases, affects children at school. They lack motivation that may arise from their family context and it can lead to pupils' lack of interest in regard to school. ( MEP1CEB 5) You can see the effects of poverty at school and even in the school atmosphere. Children feel the effects of poverty and they actually talk about that when they are in the playground. This is visible in the ways in which they play and they actually integrate this reality in their role-playings. (MEP2) Some of the participants stated that they had not observed any situations related to poverty: during my practicum I have never come across children with economic difficulties. ( MEP1CEB 7) I have never seen any situation which you could relate to poverty. (MEP1CEB 3) however, the majority of students did claim that it was possible to identify poverty situations during their practicum, and they highlighted their real effects on children. In their accounts there are abundant examples of the effects of the economic and social crisis at various levels: lack of school material, early dropouts, poor quality of children's clothing, lack of food and so on: during my practicum I saw a child with special needs who was going to kindergarten without having had breakfast because her parents had economic difficulties. (MEP1CEB 2) Many children go to school without having had breakfast and this of course affects their learning. (MEP1) As a consequence of the economic difficulties that have been exacerbated in Portugal over the last few years, schools have had to open during summer holidays in order to provide meals for pupils. Student-teachers reported situations that articulate the effects of the crisis on children's lives and on their behaviour at school: inadequate clothes, lack of resources, hunger and such like. Some of these situations were not familiar to the student-teachers who expressed surprise at what they had observed at school: I did see a child who used to wear the same clothes every single day and the clothes were not adequate to his size. This child had to shower at the school! (MEP11) When you ask children to bring material to school or money for a school visit, some children are not able to do it at all! (MEP-1CEB-1) The participants' accounts also pointed to difficulties in doing their job during practicum, not only due to the lack of material and resources but also as a result of children's behaviour and lack of motivation: When the school doesn't have the required resources for children to learn, as a teacher you cannot provide them with learning experiences that may challenge them. It becomes difficult to get children motivated to learn if you don't have the materials that you need. (MEP5) The classroom conditions and facilities don't promote success; if there are no materials in the classroom, as a teacher your work is going to be undermined. (MEP6) Student-teachers revealed that the lack of resources at school and the lack of funding led them to change their pedagogical activities, with implications for children's learning and development: For instance, the lack of material makes you change or postpone some activities. Actually it happened to me. Because of the lack of material, I had to postpone one of the activities during my practicum and it would have been really interesting for children. (MEP1CEB 7) The lack of material makes your job as a teacher much more difficult. Also, the increasing poverty can be seen in pupils' failure and in their misbehaviour in regard to their colleagues and teachers. (MEP1) Students' accounts did not just focus on the impact of poverty on pupils' learning and on teachers' work. They also spoke of children's leisure time and the fact that some of them cannot attend some of the activities: In the kindergarten where I did my practicum, one child was not able to go to the beach because his parents didn't have money to pay for it. (MEP1CEB 2) I remember that one child has given up from the kindergarten because of economic problems and she went to her grandmother's house. (MEP3) As this last quotation suggests, one of the consequences of the crisis and growing economic difficulties is the early dropout of children from school: If children are not motivated due to lack of resources and support they give up after compulsory education. (MEP2) Being at school is expensive and nowadays parents need to pay much more for school materials and textbooks, which leads to dropout because they cannot afford it. (MEP1) As previous research has demonstrated, poverty directly affects academic achievement due to the lack of resources available for student success. In other words, low achievement is closely correlated with lack of resources. Empirical work has shown the correlation between low socio-economic status and low achievement (lacour and Tissington 2011).

Strategies to deal with poverty at school
Student-teachers were asked about the ways in which teachers and schools, and themselves as trainees, deal with poverty and its effects on school. They were asked to describe concrete situations that they had experienced. Most of them highlighted the role of teachers in helping children facing economic difficulties, by providing them with personal and financial support and by creating alternative approaches to responding to shortages of resources: From what I have heard, for teachers and early childhood carers this situation is very difficult to deal with. They try to come up with alternative solutions in order for children not to drop out. Many of them do even pay for the food for children. (MEP1) Many times I saw teachers bringing materials from their homes and spending their money on buying stuff for children. (MEP5) during my practicum I saw that teachers were concerned about situations of poverty and they were offering different sorts of food and trying to find funding to take as many children as possible to the beach during holidays. (MEP4) Other participants in the study, albeit a minority, refer to some teachers' lack of special attention to poverty issues at school: In general, I think that schools, especially teachers, think that poverty issues have nothing to do with them… even if it affects children's learning. (EPE1CEB 2)

Teachers' complex role in a context of crisis: promoting equity and social justice
Most of the participants talked about their professional learning during their practicum, and the ways in which they had become more aware of their pivotal role in promoting equity and social justice through acting as facilitators of access to powerful knowledge (Young 2011) for all children. Increasing awareness of poverty issues and children's needs, managing scarce resources, advocating in practice for equity and social justice were at the forefront of their accounts: The adaptation to difficult socio-economic contexts makes you reutilise things and materials in order to avoid spending money both in your home and in your workplace. (MEP6) To me practicum was very important because it made me reflect upon the current situation, especially about the crisis and how it can affect a child's life. It made me think about possible solutions to deal with these situations. (MEP11) It made me realise that as a professional-to-be I need to pay attention to children's needs and help them because they are entitled to education. (MEP1CEB 6) One of the issues that deserves further attention is the need to update the foundational democratic project of the school, since the principle of 'equal opportunities' has been called into question due to the economic and social crisis. Schools and teachers, and also institutions for ITE, have to ask the question identified by Young (2011) 'what are schools for?' . What is at stake is the democratisation of schooling, but also the democratisation of culture, because social and cultural goods are those that are most affected by austerity. People finding themselves in a critical economic situation start to cut down in these kinds of goods. Teachers as agents of change and workers of knowledge have a key role in promoting the social and cultural dimension of children and their families; and ITE needs to prepare them for that.

ITE and the need to pay attention to the social and cultural dimension of teaching
looking back on their ITE programme, some study participants stated that poverty issues were discussed in two modules, but the vast majority said nothing about poverty was covered in their ITE programme or stated that these issues were not taken into consideration while at university: I haven't discussed these kinds of issues. (MEP7) It was not discussed during my ITE programme. (MEP9) Some could not remember: I don't remember, unfortunately, but the discussion of these kinds of issues was minimal. (MEP1CEB 3) Others did state that they had discussed poverty and its implications during their ITE programme: I did discuss these issues in the modules of Sociology of Childhood and Education during my first degree in my second year at university. We did work on that and we read texts about that too. (MEP2) This issue was dealt with in the module of Multicultural Education in my Master's degree. It was very superficial though… (MEP4) I think it is important to look at these kinds of issues in ITE curriculum, because as a teacher you can see it more and more in kindergarten and pre-school. (MEP1) Most of the participants identified suggestions and recommendations for ITE in order to include issues related to poverty, social justice and equity in its curriculum: unfortunately, it [poverty] is a theme that is really visible in Portuguese schools. And I think it is necessary to look at how to deal with this situation during your training at university. (MEP1CEB 6) It would be useful to include issues of poverty in ITE curriculum as it is more and more present in schools. It would be important to examine how to deal with these situations and, who knows, to actually go to places where poverty is more visible and to see how it is dealt with in practice. (MEP4) I think it is important that student teachers at basic education are provided with information and strategies that enable them to deal with different contexts, as in the future you may end up teaching in one school where you may find poverty situations. (MEP1CEB 2) One possibility might be the inclusion in the ITE curriculum of issues related to children's rights, which are far from being a reality, more than two decades after the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) was launched. Existing literature suggests that teachers' and head teachers' perceptions and attitudes to social class and poverty in the classroom point to the lack of a critical perspective on context and fall back on deficit models from a middle-class perspective of the norm (see, for instance, gorski 2012; lupton and Thrupp 2013).

Discussion and implications for teacher education
The child should be fully prepared to live an individual life in society, and brought up in the spirit of the ideals proclaimed in the Charter of the united nations, and in particular in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity. (Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989) This paper set out to reflect on issues of child poverty in the Portuguese context after the financial, economic and social crisis of the last few years. Its aim was twofold: (i) to look at the macro level by examining recent policy documents and other reports on the education sector; and (ii) to analyse the ways in which ITE deals with poverty issues, within the post-Bologna context, through the voices of student-teachers who have finished their practicum at school. despite the limitations of the study in terms of participants (all volunteers), the findings raise issues related to equity and social justice and highlight the need for teachers to be aware of the social and cultural dimension of their complex and demanding role, particularly in times of crisis.
From the data, three main ideas may be identified. First, the relevant documents about education, as well as existing research, pointed to the deterioration of working conditions at school for teachers and, as a result of the economic and social crisis, greater challenges and pressures have been put into them. Student-teachers participating in this study also reported evidence of increasingly complex demands placed upon schools and teachers who, apart from teaching, have to deal with social issues such as child poverty, lack of motivation and scarcity of resources. Their accounts are illustrative of the difficulties that most teachers have to go through in their work, especially in regard to families in a critical economic situation. Issues of diversity, equity and social justice were also discussed in their accounts. Student-teachers' accounts revealed their perceptions about poverty and its impact on children's well-being and equal opportunities.
Second, the strategies used by teachers to face poverty situations have made student-teachers more aware of their lack of preparedness to deal with teaching in such a demanding context. Being and feeling like a teacher in a real context is seen as an opportunity for student-teachers not only to realise the demanding nature of their work but also its complexity and social dimension. Examples of strategies employed by the teachers included providing individual personal and financial support, and creating alternative approaches to responding to shortages of resources. The findings stress the complex and pivotal role in promoting equity and social justice through acting as a facilitator of access to powerful knowledge for all children. As Young (2011) suggests, there is a need to move beyond the 'knowledge of the powerful' and to take into account the 'powerful knowledge' . In discussions about the school curriculum, it is important to know if the knowledge available at school is powerful, which means, knowledge that enables pupils to understand the world in which they live: 'There is a link between the emancipatory hopes associated with the expansion of schooling and the opportunity that schools provide for learners to acquire "powerful knowledge" that they rarely have access to at home' . (Young 2011, 155).
Finally, the findings also point to the need to reinforce the social and cultural dimension of ITE. Although this topic is seen as a key component for ITE curricula in the Portuguese legal text, it is up to the higher education institutions to make decisions on how to implement it, as there are no compulsory credits allocated to it. The aim is to include the ethical, social and cultural dimension within the other components which have a required number of credits attached to them. ITE plays a key role during these demanding times in Portugal, not only in providing student-teachers with a more complex and broad picture of the teaching profession, but also in terms of a wider and critical debate about education, especially concerning policy, school organisation, curriculum and pedagogy. Talking about the uSA context, Zeichner (2010) discusses the commodification of teacher education, its hyper-rationality and increased accountability and attacks on multicultural education. Also, Sleeter (2008) analyses the ways in which equity and democracy have been undermined and she identifies three neoliberal pressures on teacher education: away from explicit equity-oriented teacher preparation, and towards preparing teachers as technicians; away from defining teacher quality in terms of professional knowledge, and towards defining it in terms of testable content knowledge; and towards shortening university-based teacher education or bypassing it altogether. Other existing empirical work suggests that pre-service teachers' attitudes to poverty are often also deeply ingrained and resistant to change (Cox, Watts, and horton 2012).
The participants in this study were clear about the role of ITE. They highlighted some areas in which ITE needs further improvement. Most of these related to social and cultural issues. Recent trends in ITE tend to emphasise the technical and didactical side to the detriment of other key dimensions (see .
Teachers are agents of change and workers of knowledge and thus they have a pivotal role in promoting the social and cultural dimension of children and their families. ITE needs to prepare them for that. In times of high unemployment, ITE may need to be re-examined and re-invented in order to meet the challenges of a global society and the needs of the schools of the twenty-first century. One way of moving forward is to develop a broader understanding of ITE associated with social and cultural issues, teachers as agents of change and workers of knowledge, and schools as places where culture, leisure and other aspects need to be considered in different ways.
The economic crisis and austerity measures have profoundly affected schools and teachers' lives and brought changes in ITE policy and curriculum in the post-Bologna context. Changes have been towards an accentuation of the academic and didactical perspective, to the detriment of a more humanistic and critical approach open to discussion on social issues with pupils, families and local communities.
This analysis is in line with other research literature which points to the need to reinforce the ethical, cultural, social and political dimension of teaching and teacher education (Tirri 2014;Zeichner 2014;Flores 2016). Tirri (2014, 15), for instance, in Finland identified the need for a set of competencies for 'professional and ethical' teachers in light of the moral dimension of their work in dealing with a rising number of immigrant students and children with learning difficulties. Similarly, in the uSA, Zeichner (2014, 560) argued that 'the teacher as a professional view goes beyond providing teachers with teaching and management skills' . More needs to be done in this regard also in the Portuguese context. Children growing up in poverty and disadvantaged contexts are less likely to do well at school, which, in turn, has implications for their later life and it may affect their children too. To move beyond this cycle, ITE can play a pivotal role in addressing the attitudes and experiences that lie behind social differences in education. The project upon which this paper is based aims to make a contribution to the discussion and consideration of the ethical, social and cultural dimension in ITE programmes. Another implication lies in pupil voice. In such demanding times it is more important than ever to pay attention to pupils' voices, through listening to their own views and experiences about the ways in which the school and the curriculum affect their lives, their learning and their motivation.

Disclosure statement
no potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.