This study explored the relationships of educators' levels of critical consciousness, attitudes about poverty and poor people, and teaching perspectives. Critical consciousness was defined by Freire (2000) as the ability of individuals to assess their own identities related to the sociopolitical realities that surround them and critically examine how those identities have been informed by and support privilege and oppression. This study sought to define critical consciousness through the use of four scales. Upon the identification of the factors that emerged from the responses to the instruments, the construct of critical consciousness was used to encompass the educators' level of consciousness. Two additional instruments, based on attitudes about poverty and poor people and teaching perspectives, were employed to discover relationships between the educators' responses on these instruments and critical consciousness. The data were analyzed using factor analysis and correlations to assess the research questions. The factor analysis produced six factors collectively identified as one major factor for critical consciousness. The results of this study were statistically significant for the relationship between critical consciousness and attitudes about poverty and poor people and between teaching perspectives and attitudes about poverty and poor people. This study revealed that as educators moved toward a heightened consciousness of privilege and oppression, their attitudes about poverty and poor become more positive. While educators with a low level of critical consciousness tended to oversimplify the problems associated with poverty by blaming poor people for their circumstances so that as critical consciousness decreased, positive attitudes about poverty and poor people also decreased. The impact of these attitudes about poverty and poor people on educators' teaching perspectives could not be determined from this study suggesting that the perspectives did not correlate with either a low or high level of consciousness. It was found that attitudes about poverty and poor people could predict the teaching perspectives of Transmission and Social Reform. This analysis suggested that individuals who held negative attitudes about poverty and poor people identified with the teaching perspective of Transmission and those who held positive attitudes about poverty and poor people identified with the teaching perspective of Social Reform. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]