Equity traps then and now: deficit thinking, racial erasure and naïve acceptance of meritocracy

Abstract

In what some have called a ‘post-racial’ era, with the two-term election of the first African American president of the US, it is often assumed that pre-service and newly in-serviced millennial teachers would have an advanced equity consciousness. However, in this NSF-funded qualitative study that explored the equity consciousness of new teachers entering the field, it was revealed that these new teachers, like many of their predecessors, continue to be caught in equity traps. These traps – racial erasure, deficit views and the naïve acceptance of meritocracy – will, if not mediated, prevent teachers from being successful with all their students, particularly students who represent populations that have historically been underprepared or marginalised. This has significant implications for both university teacher education and educational leadership programmes.