Asset- and Deficit-Based Sociocultural Constructions of Adolescents: A Thematic Analysis of Two Teacher Candidates’ Responses to Student Teaching Incidents

Abstract

In this qualitative study, we analyze the role of emotion in teacher candidates’ (TCs’) sociocultural constructions of youth during student teaching. We explored the following questions: How do TCs reinforce and/or disrupt perspectives on teaching adolescents during discussions about classroom field incidents? How and with what effect do emotions move among TCs and shape discussions of classroom field incidents? How do TCs express emotions during discussions of classroom field incidents? We build on literature on emotion and adolescence to highlight two illustrative examples of TCs’ co-constructions. We employ Conversation Analysis (CA) to transcribe spoken discourse and to identify emotional paralanguage and Thematic Analysis (TA) to synthesize data into patterned findings. In so doing, we illuminate a dynamic dialectical relationship between TCs’ emotions and their perspectives of students, which resulted in both asset- and deficit-based co-constructed conceptualizations of youth.