Beliefs and learning opportunities in educational practice in the context of poverty

In Chile, students from the poorest sectors register lower school achievement levels. This failure has been explained from several approaches and, although many government and private initiatives currently exist, their results show no significant educational achievements. Te purpose of this theoretical paper is to establish the conceptual research foundations for a study on teaching staff, from the perspective of the thoughts and beliefs of the teachers themselves, which we believe are the key to understanding their performance. Basic adaptive mechanisms would lead to the teacher developing simple knowledge -inaccessible to consciousness- to resolve problems without unnecessary cognitive effort. This would lead to classroom activities guided more by a belief system rather than through formal knowledge. If these facts are ignored, then the traditional practices will continue to be reproduced.