Deficit Orientation Research Articles

Gaps in Achievement or Opportunity? How Achievement Gap Discourse Affects Teachers’ Beliefs and Priorities

Education scholars argue that the term “achievement gap” promotes deficit orientations toward certain students of color, focuses the field on individualistic rather than structural sources of inequality, and narrows viable policy solutions for equity concerns. Using a randomized survey, I examine whether the term “racial opportunity gap” mitigates critiques of the achievement gap term. I find that teachers responding to this language less strongly attributed the gap to individual characteristics—student motivation, student effort, and parenting—and more strongly prioritized incorporating students’ racial/ethnic and cultural identities into instruction to address the gap than teachers responding to “racial achievement gap” language.

Blackness in dual language bilingual education research: A call to expand constructions of U.S. Latinidad

ABSTRACT Though recent research has begun to problematize the enactment of anti-Black ideologies within dual language bilingual education (DLBE) research, fewer studies have explored how dominant raciolinguistic ideologies impact U.S. AfroLatinx learners. In this semi-systematic literature review, I examine how Blackness is (or is not) taken up in DLBE scholarship, focusing on three primary lines of inquiry: deficit orientations toward Black language, race-evasiveness, and the role of raciolinguistic ideologies in mediating identity development. This endeavor merges insights from raciolinguistic ideologies and Black-imiento to challenge the under-theorization of U.S. AfroLatinidad in DLBE and call for an expansion of research that specifically attends to the intersectional experiences of Black emergent bilinguals and developing an AfroLatinx historical consciousness in DLBE scholarship and pedagogy.

Graphic novels as counter-stories: Jerry Craft’s New Kid as a way to teach critical racial awareness

This chapter examines Jerry Craft’s 2019 published graphic novel New Kid by applying Critical Race Theory (CRT). New Kid is based on autobiographic experiences of being African American at an American, mainly white, (elite) school, and can therefore be read as a “counter-story”. It is written out of the perspective of 12- year-old black boy, Jordan Banks, who is a “New Kid” at the private Riverdale Academy. The book has caused a nationwide debate in the US, being accused of preaching Critical Race Theory (CRT). Craft meanwhile claims that he did not write it with any political intentions. The article takes this debate as point of departure to first explain the main tenets of CRT and to explore in what way New Kid can be read as a counter-story in the sense of CRT. The analysis shows that New Kid reflects structural racism towards African Americans (e.g., microaggressions, othering and deficit orientation) in an educational context and reveals the negative consequences of racism for students’ self-perception.
 In the second part, the article investigates possibilities to teach New Kid in a European setting, taking the new Norwegian curriculum (Kunnskapsløftet) as an example. New Kid is identified as an appropriate medium to discuss race in Norwegian schools. This is particularly because of the sophisticated way New Kid approaches racism. At the same time New Kid itself can be examined for racism towards other marginalized groups, namely Asian Americans.

Formative interventions for science teachers’ expansive learning and practices with multilingual learners: A case study from Lebanon

ABSTRACT This paper illustrates utilising cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and the methodology of formative intervention as a responsive capacity-building framework for enhancing science teachers’ professional development and system-level capacity in multilingual settings. We report findings from the initial Change Laboratory (CL) meetings of an ongoing formative intervention project with two schools. CL meetings are explored as ‘dialogic’ spaces for teachers, teacher-leaders and researchers to explore research-based notions alongside practical knowledge for transformative professional development that upholds teacher agency and leverages multilingual students’ diverse resources. Data included meeting transcripts, classroom observations, researcher notes and classroom artefacts. Results showed that higher levels of dialogic struggle around the role of language in teaching and learning science allowed one school’s participants to challenge deficit orientations that allot the home language a lower status and to begin adopting more linguistically responsive practices to enhance their diverse students’ science learning. We discuss the differences between the two schools through the notion of ‘boundary-crossing.’

PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS REGARDING THE ASSET-BASED COMMUNITY-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (ABCD) APPROACH: A SOUTH AFRICAN STUDY

Asset-based community-driven development (ABCD) has gained momentum in social work education over the last ten years. This mix-method study presents students’ perceptions of the relevance and application of ABCD in social work education at two universities in South Africa. The students perceived ABCD as a relevant approach that shifts community members from a deficit orientation focused on lack and needs to one in which people utilise their assets and take ownership of their own future. However, students experienced challenges in facilitating community members’ movement from being passive recipients of services and benefits to seeing themselves as change agents driving their own development. The results are intended to contribute to curricular and pedagogical improvements. Keywords: asset-based community-driven development (ABCD), problem-based approach, social work education, social work students

College Knowledge is Power: Supporting the Postsecondary Aspirations of Black Male Ninth Graders

Research on young Black men often emanates from pathologizing deficit orientations. Using the High School Longitudinal Survey of 2009 (HSLS: 09), we analyze the postsecondary aspirations of ninth-grade Black men, examining them in light of their college knowledge and interactions with school counselors. We find that the aspirations of these students are high; however, their college knowledge is limited as well as their access to those persons often designated to support college choice processes—school counselors. Young Black men who talk to their school counselors about college are more likely to talk to their counselors about courses, careers, and personal problems. Implications for school-based policy and practice are addressed.

Psychosocial and Motor Characteristics of Patients With Hypermobility

ObjectivesTo identify psychosocial and motor aspects related to joint hypermobility (JH) in a sample from almost all Brazilian states by age range and sex; to characterize JH by the Beighton total score ≥4, ≥5, and ≥6 according to sex and age and atypicality in the sitting position and in the hands; identify, in the total sample, manifestations of “growing pain” and its location, fatigue, attention deficit, anxiety, insomnia, drowsiness, apathy, depression, delay in walking, not crawling or crawling differently, school performance, spatial orientation and/or temporally impaired, social isolation, and being stigmatized as “lazy/clumsy/apathetic”.MethodsThis retrospective, observational, quantitative, and cross-sectional study used data obtained through analyses of descriptive and inferential crossings between 2012 and 2020 of 482 medical records of individuals between 1 and 76 years of age, from most Brazilian states. All patients previously diagnosed with “joint hypermobility syndrome” (JHS) and “Ehlers-Danlos syndrome hypermobility type” (EDS-HT) had their medical records reassessed, following the guidelines established in 2017. The analysis of GJH was performed using the updated method by Beighton method; atypical characteristics were investigated in the hands and the ability to sit in the “W” and the “concave” positions. The characteristics and manifestations of “growing pain” and its location were analyzed in the total sample, fatigue, insomnia, drowsiness, apathy, depression, social isolation, attention deficit, anxiety, stigmatization as “lazy,” clumsy/restless, impaired school performance, and spatial and/or temporal orientation. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used, such as Mean, Median, Mode, Standard Deviation, Standard Error, Maximum Value, Minimum Value, Komolgorov-Smirnov, Significance, Relative Value, Absolute Value, Mann-Whitney U, and Correlation of Spearman.ResultsJH in the total sample predominated in the upper limbs, the majority were women, represented by 352 (73.02%), 15 years old or older with 322 (66.80%), 312 (64.73%) had a Beighton total score ≥6, which decreased as the age increased. Always sitting in the “concave” position was represented by 54.15% and the ability to sit in the “W” position by 39.21%; signs on the hands totaled between 27.59 and 44.19% with a significant correlation between the variables. Among the characteristics, fatigue predominated, followed by an awkward/clumsy/restless individual, attention deficit, anxiety and stigmatized as “lazy,” insomnia, drowsiness, apathy, depression, impaired spatial and/or temporal orientation, and social isolation. From the total sample, pain in the lower limbs was reported by 55.81% and having or having had “growing pain” was reported by 36.93%, delay in walking occurred in 19.92%, 15.35% did not crawl or crawled differently, and for 12.86%, school performance was impaired. Higher Beighton total scores showed a trend towards motor implications and correlation between variables. Ability to still sit in the “concave” position was possible for 54.15% and to sit in the “W” position for 39.21%.ConclusionIn the total sample, the JH characteristic prevails in the upper limbs of female children, adolescents and adults, with a total Beighton score ≥6. Most sit in the “concave” position and less than half also sit in the “W” position and with atypical hand postures. The higher Beighton scores, which include the upper limbs, show a tendency to not crawl or crawl differently, delayed ambulation, and impaired school performance. The predominance of JH in the upper limbs is suggestive of a justification for not crawling or crawling differently. Characteristics of atypical motor performance in hands and sitting posture, in addition to fatigue, pain since childhood, anxiety, apathy, depression, sleep disorders, stigmatization, attention deficit, spatial and/or temporal orientation impairment, and social isolation are characteristics. suggestive of psychosocial implications at different ages. Future studies with motor and psychosocial aspects of people with JH will help to identify the phenotype of this population and consequent guidance for clinical management based on the motor and psychosocial aspects of people with JH.

Fabric-Based Computing: (Re)examining the Materiality of Computer Science Learning Through Fiber Crafts

AbstractFiber crafts, such as weaving and sewing, occupy a tension-filled space within computing. While associated with domestic practices, fiber crafts have been recognized as a precursor of the earliest computers and continue to present sources of computational inspiration. The connections between fiber crafts and computing have the potential to uncover possibilities for computing to become more diversified in terms of materials, cultural practices, and ultimately people. To explore the promises of fiber crafts for STEM education, this qualitative dissertation built on constructionist and posthumanist perspectives to examine two fiber crafts (i.e., weaving and fabric manipulation) as contexts for computer science learning. Collectively, the dissertation effectively aligned fiber crafts with computational concepts and showed their potential as a promising context for computer science learning. The work further showed that materials used for STEM learning are non-neutral. Materials matter in what can be learned computationally. Lastly, guided by posthumanist perspectives, the dissertation uncovered computational learning as the process of producing physical expansions and highlighted learning as the process of how computational concepts physically change. The work has implications for theorizing learning, designing for learning, and educational practice. For example, the dissertation presents the utility of posthumanist perspectives as an additional theoretical approach to the study of learning that can surface and help address ongoing relational deficit orientations.

Project Recuerdo: Honoring Latinx Families’ Knowledge Within the School

AbstractThe authors describe a culturally sustaining bilingual family engagement project that draws upon Latinx families’ experiential and cultural wealth and integrates that knowledge within the literacy curriculum of a bilingual fourth grade classroom. Through the use of monthly writing prompts, Project Recuerdo, engages families in sharing stories that demonstrate cultural, linguistic, and historical knowledge with the child, teacher, and wider community. This form of family engagement counters deficit orientations towards diverse families, especially Mexican American families, as problems to fix, and instead honors the wealth of knowledge families have and integrates it within the curriculum. Through the analysis of the bilingual journal entries, related classroom artifacts, and family focal groups, the authors validate the importance of learning with and from diverse families; and detail the process for planning the implementation of the family project. Authors provide suggestions for teacher self‐reflection and possible writing prompts to engage families.

Social Justice in Kinesiology, Health, and Disability

ABSTRACT The current state of research in kinesiology scholarship is largely void of empirical research that counters deficit thinking from a social justice perspective. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the social justice agenda in kinesiology, and to suggest directions for the future of social justice research in our fields. First, we offer clarification of social justice and discuss how researchers might challenge dominant (majoritarian) discourses through critical interrogation of oppression and privilege, particularly in the United States (U.S.). We further suggest the utilization of a critical theoretical framework in conducting research and in challenging the prevalent deficit orientation of research engaging historically and contemporarily marginalized U.S. populations (e.g., people of color, women, and individuals with disabilities). Even more importantly, the lens through which the research is viewed must be adjusted to fully grasp the pertinent issues.

#Black Boy Joy: The College Aspirations of Rural Black Male Students

Too often research on Black boys emanate from deficit orientations and take a problem centered approach which overemphasizes stereotypes or pathologizes Black male students, overlooking their aspirations and successes. Utilizing the High School Longitudinal Survey of 2009 (HSLS: 09), we examine the postsecondary goals of Black male ninth graders as well as the relationships among their educational aspirations, college knowledge, and supportive school personnel using Community Cultural Wealth as the conceptual framework. We found that the educational aspirations of Black male ninth graders are high; however, their knowledge of college falls short of their educational aspirations and their relationships with teachers and school counselors. We discuss the strengths, attributes, and systems of support that are useful to rural Black male students as they transition through secondary education to post-secondary settings and call for a paradigmatic shift using family-school-community partnerships based on the findings

Deconstructing discourses of diversity

Abstract Despite the growing number of cross-cultural adolescents from immigrants and families formed through international/interracial marriages in South Korea, empirical studies investigating newcomer adolescents’ identity positioning in secondary education have been scarce. Drawing upon Ruíz’s (1984) framework for language policy and planning and Cummins’ (1986, 2001) empowerment framework for minority education, this article investigates how diversity is conceptualised in South Korea through a case study of multicultural education. Specifically, the article examines how newcomer adolescents’ linguistic and cultural identities are perceived by teachers and peers in two high schools. The findings revealed that diversity is dominantly viewed as an impediment to academic success for newcomer youth and is only appreciated once students are fully assimilated into Korean society. The concept of diversity as a resource and right and the notion of multicultural and multilingual identities in the Korean educational context are absent, or hidden, at best. Although there are examples where newcomer learners see diversity as empowerment and resources for their identity construction and positionality, this orientation has not been acknowledged in educational practices. The study calls for conceptualizing diversity as empowerment and resources as ethical lenses to move away from ethnocentric and deficit orientations.

Discourses Surrounding Latinx Students and Families among Literacy Educators

ABSTRACT The literacy faculty at a regional, comprehensive university in the southeastern U.S. explored the perceptions of students in their undergraduate and graduate literacy programs—as well as students in contiguous, supported programs—regarding the achievement gaps between Latinx and bi/multilingual students and their White, English-dominant peers. They asked participating pre-service and in-service educators (N = 60) to write a brief narrative explaining why, in their opinion, the reading scores of Latinx students and bi/multilingual learners were significantly lower than their English-dominant peers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading for Georgia in 2015 and 2017. The researchers analyzed the participants’ responses to determine the prevalence of asset- and deficit-oriented perspectives among pre-service and in-service educators in their literacy education programs and courses. Qualitative analysis of responses revealed that both asset- and deficit-based discourse was evidenced, though deficit-oriented perspectives were more prevalent. While attempting to advocate for Latinx and bi/multilingual students, most respondents, especially pre-service and early career educators, likely inadvertently, explained the achievement gaps using a deficit orientation. The researchers suggest considerations for systemic change and improvement in their literacy education courses and programs based on these findings.

“No! Turn the Pages!” Repositioning Neuroqueer Literacies

Recent literacy research has made substantial contributions to expanding definitions of literacies beyond stringent parameters of decoding print. These inquiries have intersected with topics such as multimodality and critical literacy in general education literacy classrooms. However, students in isolated special education settings labeled with dis/abilities such as autism or intellectual disability often only receive reading instruction emphasizing functional skills and sight words. The data for this study emerged from a secondary isolated special education classroom where students identified as significantly dis/abled responded to inclusive picturebooks. Analysis is framed by the scholarship on neurological queerness. Findings illustrate how students engage in literacy practices via neuroqueer asocial actions and embodied inventions when they are presumed as competent by teachers and staff. These findings challenge deficit orientations guiding special education literacy instruction and offer implications and openings for continuing to expand who counts as literate and what counts as literacy.

A Teacher-family Consultation Approach to School-based Intervention and Support

ABSTRACT Advances in school psychology and mental health highlight the role of collaborative teacher-parent engagement to ensure optimal psychoeducational support. The objective of this South African study was to explore the views of parents and learners regarding Adelman and Taylor’s Initial Assessment and Consultation (IAC) shared problem-solving approach to psychoeducational intervention. This approach promotes a paradigm shift from a reductionist and individual deficit orientation to a model which places emphasis on family empowerment and systemic intervention. Data was collected using focus group interviews with 44 parents as well as by administering pre- post-IAC intervention questionnaires to 72 learners who experienced a range of barriers to learning. The research was conducted in 18 under-resourced mainstream regular education schools. Despite acknowledging challenges, parents felt that they had actively participated in the problem-solving and decision-making process with respect to their children. Paired t-test results showed a significant improvement in the views of learners regarding their school work, behaviour and home situations after participation in the IAC family sessions. While further research is recommended, the findings of this exploratory study suggest that the IAC is an adaptable approach which can potentially be applied within diverse school contexts to foster teacher-family collaboration.

Trauma-Sensitive Schools and Social Justice: A Critical Analysis

The creation of trauma-sensitive schools has become an increasingly central focus of school reform and urban school reform in particular. While these initiatives have been framed as social justice imperatives, this framing warrants critique. This critical analysis surveys the history, models, and documented outcomes of trauma-sensitive approaches in K-12 education. Special attention is given to gaps in existing frameworks which lead to a decontextualized understanding of disproportionality, an apolitical conception of schools, and a deficit orientation toward families and communities. The authors advocate for the integration of social justice education into frameworks for trauma-sensitive schools as an initial step toward addressing these issues.

‘Academic literacies’: sustaining a critical space on writing in academia

In this paper, I briefly track the emergence and foci of academic literacies as a field of inquiry, summarising its contributions to understandings about writing and meaning making in academia. Writing from my specific geohistorical location in the UK, I foreground the importance of early key works that encapsulated concerns about deficit orientations to students’ language and literacy practices (e.g. Ivanič, 1998; Lea and Street,1998). I also underline the transnational dimension to the development of academic literacies which has helped drive forward intellectual debates about the relationship between academic language and literacy practices, and participation in academia. I argue that academic literacies provides an important space for critically exploring what are often taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature and value of academic writing conventions, and the ways these (both assumptions and conventions) impact on opportunities for participation in knowledge making. This critical thinking space continues to serve as an intellectual resource for researchers, teachers and students in contemporary neo-liberal higher education, where regimes of evaluation are super-normative, even in (or because of) a context of super-diversity, that is increased mobility of peoples and semiotic practices. Academic literacies as praxis necessarily involves straddling both normative and transformative orientations (Lillis and Scott, 2007) or what Hall (1992) refers to as the ‘academic’ and ‘intellectual’ dimensions to academia.

Shared literacy sponsors: moments that sustained learning and challenged neo-deficit ideologies in programmatic family literacy

ABSTRACT Family literacy programmes operate on the periphery of American education and often employ a deficit orientation toward minoritized families; still, parents view these programmes as language-learning resources. This ethnographic study explores the experiences of Latina mothers enrolled in a school-based family literacy programme in Nebraska to understand what sustained their involvement. Utilising Brandt’s (2001. Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press) literacy sponsorship framework, it suggests that the programme personnel somewhat shared the mothers’ literacy sponsorship and, consequently, provided a learning experience that supported participants in meeting their goals. Observation and interview data showed two partially agreed upon sponsors of literacy: enriched livelihoods and spending time with children. Despite variations in other perspectives and goals, each had similar continuing stakes in participating in the programme. This agreement illuminated how the programme was responsive to mothers’ goals, despite its deficit lens, and suggests a vantage point for developing more culturally congruent family literacy programmes.

Elaborating Funds of Knowledge: Community-Oriented Practices in International Contexts

This article discusses a sociocultural approach we have developed, which we refer to as funds of knowledge. The emphasis of the funds of knowledge work has been to develop both theory and methods through which educators can approach and document the funds of knowledge of families and re-present them on the bases of the knowledge, resources, and strengths they possess, thus challenging deficit orientations that are so dominant, in particular, in the education of working-class children. In this article, I present a translocation view of funds of knowledge and what we can learn theoretically and methodologically from this body of work. I review four studies conducted in different countries and sociocultural contexts. In each context, the researchers reorient the concept of funds of knowledge to address issues germane to their settings. The four studies from New Zealand, Spain, Australia, and Uganda used funds of knowledge to generate new ideas and positionalities regarding work with teachers, students, and families. None of the projects simply replicated the original studies conducted in the United States. The four studies documented empirically and represent pedagogically families and students as resourceful and helped educators arrange environments that are academically sound and strongly oriented to building on such resources for learning.

Equity for English Learners: Evidence from Four Years of California’s Local Control Funding Formula

ABSTRACTThis study examined evidence of equity for English Learners-one of the three targeted student groups–in the early implementation of California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) across data sets from seven studies. We used social justice inquiry methods and data integration analytic approaches that included purposeful sampling of districts’ Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs), and data integration analyses of interviews with education leaders to examine how equity was advanced for English Learners. Our findings reveal that the quest for equity for English Learners is elusive and requires multilevel efforts to reverse the national, state, and local histories of unequal treatment, deficit orientations, socio-political dynamics, and legacies of unequal funding that still permeate many schools. Further advances in equity will require greater systemic coherence that sharpens the focus on educational outcomes for English Learners. California’s most recent policy shifts–including the passage of Proposition 58 and the English Learner Roadmap–show promise of systemic coherence and alignment to an assets-based approach for English Learners in the state and nation, as tangible evidence of equity in services and outcomes are still works in progress.