Deficit Perspective Research Articles

Complex effects of racism and discrimination on African Americans' health and well-being: Navigating the status quo

Most research on the effects of racism and discrimination on the health and well-being of African Americans utilize a deficit perspective, one that homogeneously paints African Americans as disadvantaged victims. Such approaches do little to highlight the variability in the effects of racism and discrimination on relevant outcomes, and the resources that African Americans have drawn upon to navigate an environment characterized by varying levels of racialized hostility. The goal of this special issue is to inspire more refined conceptualizations of how African Americans navigate an often-hostile status quo in service of their health and well-being. The articles in this special issue examine within-race heterogeneity in African Americans' responses to varying manifestations of racism and discrimination, as well as subsequent heterogeneity in the effects of racism and discrimination on African Americans’ health and well-being at the individual level. The commentaries and articles address the goals of this special issue in three broad categories of health outcomes: biological/physiological, mind and brain, and health behavior. These contributions demonstrate several critical themes that can guide future work to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneity in the effects of racism and discrimination on health and well-being among African Americans.

Individualized Language Plans: A Potential Tool for Collaboration to Support Multilingual Students

Prior research has documented how current policies and practices reinforce deficit perspectives of multilingual students at the secondary level, particularly students who have been labeled as long-term English learners. At the same time, scholars have argued for a need to collect detailed, individualized information about multilingual students’ linguistic, academic, and cultural assets and design supports for students based on this information. However, few concrete examples exist of ways that schools and districts have implemented these ideas at a systemic level. Building from prior research about who decides the educational services youth receive and drawing from theory about aesthetic care, authentic care, and reciprocal dialogue, we describe and analyze a tool two rural California school districts developed to foster collaboration in support of students considered long-term English learners: Individualized Language Plans (ILPs). Our analysis is based on three years of data collection, including interviews with district administrators and teachers involved in the design and implementation of ILPs, as well as observations of meetings where ILPs were created. We discuss implications for research, policy, and practice.

Positive and negative psychosocial factors related to healthy and unhealthy weight control among nursing students.

Although nursing students are educated on the importance of exercising regularly and maintaining a well-balanced diet, many do not practice healthy weight management behaviors, and some even use unhealthy weight loss methods. Yet, little research has examined both positive and negative psychosocial variables related to weight control among nursing students. The present study aimed to identify the most salient psychosocial variables related to healthy and unhealthy weight control among nursing students. Using survey data from 241 nursing students, structural equation modeling was conducted to examine the relative contributions of eight interrelated psychosocial variables, including constructs from a strengths perspective (health-specific hope, health self-efficacy, social support, and body satisfaction) and from a deficit perspective (depression, anxiety, weight perception, and barriers to physical activity). Results showed that the degree to which individuals perceive themselves to be overweight was related to both healthy and unhealthy weight control. Aside from weight perception, health self-efficacy produced the strongest association with healthy weight control, and anxiety produced the strongest association with unhealthy weight control. The structural model explained 23% of the variance in healthy weight control and 29% of the variance in unhealthy weight control. These findings emphasize the need for tailored, integrated weight management interventions for nursing students that equip them with effective anxiety management skills and build self-efficacy.

Unequal English accents, covert accentism and EAL migrants in Australia

Abstract Accentism refers to the ways that “unequal English accents” become re-allocated in particular English-speaking dominant contexts, creating different presumptions, ideologies and attitudes towards the English accent and pronunciation of English speakers. Using data derived from two larger ethnographic studies, this article aims to explore the ways that English as an Additional Language (EAL) migrants experience covert accentism – the social exclusion caused covertly when the dominant members of society misunderstand the accents of EAL users. Our study shows that EAL users express their worry of being stereotyped for their English accents, which interferes with their social and daily life. In particular, the participants noted forms of social exclusion such as a lack of interest in them or their experiences, and deficit perspectives surrounding their overall English practices including their accents. We conclude that such instances of covert accentism can lead to more serious implications, such as having difficulty fostering relationships with members of the dominant society, accent bullying, and psychological damage.

“When People Don't Know Me, They Think…”: Fostering a Multimodal Translanguaging Space that Leverages Students' Voices

AbstractThis article describes the design and implementation of a project from a translanguaging pedagogical stance. The research presented seeks to understand how translanguaging as a multimodal practice shapes the experiences of students in a traditional English Language Arts 8th‐grade classroom and how students leveraged their multimodal semiotic repertoires to explore identity expression. The article provides a framework for understanding translanguaging as a multimodal practice and discusses how it is embedded strategically in the design of instruction in a class in which many of the students are emergent bilinguals. It analyzes the process of producing short videos in which students critically examine how they were perceived by others and who they really are and presenting data that examine how students defy deficit perspectives and use their multimodal communicative repertoires to curate self‐representation.

Teaching English to Linguistically Diverse Students from Migration Backgrounds: From Deficit Perspectives to Pockets of Possibility

This article reports on an interview study with six secondary school LX English teachers working in a part of Austria where there is an above-average number of residents–and thus also students–who are multilingual and come from migration backgrounds. It attempts to extend research on deficit perspectives of multilingual learners from migration backgrounds to the area of LX English learning and to provide insights into a language learning context that is underrepresented in international applied linguistics research, which has tended to focus on elite language learning. The article explores teachers’ perceptions of teaching English in this context. We hypothesized that teachers would hold negative beliefs about their students’ multilingual backgrounds and practices. The typological analysis of teachers’ interview data revealed that teachers did hold some dominant deficit perspectives about their students’ multilingualism and language learning; however, it also suggests that teachers are taking on the rudiments of a translanguaging stance that values multilingual practice. The article thus closes by considering how possibility perspectives can be harnessed and extended to foster students’ multilingual and multicultural development, with particular regard to LX English language learning.

Overcoming Personal Challenges of Rural Students with College-going Support Systems

Despite the inclusion of “rural” in the title, Rural America’s Pathways to College and Career: Steps for Student Success and School Improvement covers content more specific to a particular college access organization than it does direct guidance on rural student achievement. In this review, the authors discuss areas of academia and college access where content of the book may be applied practically to some rural and other populations as well as caution readers to take a critical approach to claims made by author Rick Dalton. Authors conclude that although areas of the book offer practical advice for increasing access to college and career to underrepresented student populations in general, including rural students, there are deficit perspectives on rural people, places, and education presented that warrant more rural-relevant and strengths-based examples in order to more effectively contribute to the current literature on rural education.

Teaching the whole child requires the whole teacher: Embedding socioemotional perceptions and dispositions into a culturally responsive teacher preparation program

This teacher education program aims to develop high quality teachers through development of empathy and culturally responsive pedagogy, impacting teachers’ dispositions toward students who are different from themselves. Participants included 17 undergraduate education students enrolled in a community engaged teacher education program. One-on-one interviews captured participants’ experiences and beliefs over time, related to teaching children in an urban setting. Qualitative themes emerged and shifted in frequency over the course of the semester. These included deficit perspective, knowledge of the “other,” dominant culture as a lens, best practices, asset perspective, and characteristics of high quality versus highly qualified. As teacher candidates experienced individual interactions with students, families, and community members, they developed empathy and shifted from a deficit perspective toward an asset perspective. Simultaneously, teacher candidates combined socioemotional skills with instructional best practices. Practical strategies are suggested to prepare teacher candidates to learn about themselves, their students, and to develop allies.

Academic Pathways for Formerly Incarcerated Students: “If I could do 12 years in prison, why can’t I do 12 years in college.”

This qualitative study examined the experiences of formerly incarcerated students in community colleges. In this study, participants described how they made meaning of their postsecondary education experience through their decision to start college, the college preparation, and faculty interactions that collectively influenced their academic pathways. The students of this study were formerly incarcerated Latino men enrolled in California community colleges located in northern, central, and southern regions. This study specifically sought to challenge the stigma that revolves around the experiences of the carceral system leading to a deficit perspective on this student population. The findings from this study aligns with the academic support services for this student population in higher education.

Developing STEM Teachers’ Cultural Competence through an Urban Teaching Curriculum: A Cultural Border Crossing Experience

ABSTRACT Many studies have argued the need for culturally competent teachers in the classroom as learners’ demography shifts toward more diversity. The teaching workforce remains predominantly unchanged, with more White teachers than other races or ethnic groups. Many teacher preparation programs use multicultural education or equity and diversity courses that focus on current issues and perspective; however, few use curriculums that focus on urban teaching or integrate an immersive experience to enhance their preservice teachers’ cultural competency. This paper highlights an urban teaching curriculum that uses a holistic praxis of formal—theory-based and informal—practice-based immersive learning experience to prepare preservice teachers for diversified urban classrooms. The study examined the impact of the curriculum on preservice teachers’ development of cultural knowledge base leading to cultural competency. This well-crafted praxis offer rich and authentic learning experiences resulting in the positive transformation of the preservice teacher’s beliefs, dispositions, and self-efficacy to be culturally aware and responsive. The findings indicate that cultural isolation and deficit perspectives contributed to the participants’ lack of cultural knowledge. However, the immersive experience presented through the curriculum provided the preservice teachers’ access to authentic informal learning that transformed their worldviews and enhanced their self-efficacy to teach in urban high-need settings.

Teachers’ gendered perceptions of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – a literature review

ABSTRACT This study provides a systematic review of previous research about teachers’ gendered perceptions of pupils with diagnoses or symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This review was conducted using the databases Scopus, Web of Science and ERIC. Nineteen articles were selected after narrowing down a total of 121 articles, in accordance with inclusion criteria. In sum, previous research concludes that teachers’ identification, assessment and attitudes related to pupils with ADHD diagnoses or symptoms are associated with the pupils’ gender. When pupils exhibit academic, emotional or behavioural difficulties, teachers assess girls’ impairments more severe than boys’ impairments. Nevertheless, teachers are more likely to recommend treatment, counselling and/or medication to boys than to girls. While teachers’ perceptions of pupils’ difficulties are gendered, strategies or methods for teaching pupils with ADHD seem not to be. In the articles included in this review, there are hardly any examples given of gender-sensitive teaching methods. Furthermore, it is concluded that regardless of gender aspects, a deficit perspective dominates in research presented in this article, and it appears that children are held responsible for school difficulties while the school setting is not.

The Graying of the Cool Pose: Examining Active Care Strategies Among Older African-American Men With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

The influence of masculinity norms on disparate health outcomes has been established in the literature. What is less understood are the specific ways in which African-American men "do health" by engaging in strategies promoting positive health outcomes. This article reframes what has been previously examined through a health deficit perspective by reporting the experiences and positive health maintenance strategies of older, African-American men with type 2 diabetes mellitus (diabetes). We employed an intersectional framework to thematically analyze qualitative interviews with African-American male participants (N = 15) in our National Institute on Aging-funded study of diabetes among older adults in Baltimore. Interviews consisted of a modified version of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview, which included discussions of diabetes experiences and self-management strategies. The majority of African-American men in our study link their successful diabetes management to purposeful self-care activities, despite structural and personal limitations. These activities include proactively seeking diabetes education, healthy eating, medication management, and engaging in supportive relationships. Active pursuit of a healthy lifestyle often requires redefining Black manhood, defying negative gender stereotypes of what it means to be a Black male. Results are described in the context of the "Cool Pose," a framework for understanding how African-American men and boys cope with systemic racial oppression and the unachievable dominant standards of masculinity in the United States. The results suggest that this framework may be less applicable for older African-American men who promote well-being in the wake of chronic disease as they age.

Exploring literacy engagement in a significant disability context

This study tackles the question: how is literacy engagement enacted in the context of significant disability? We delve into the complex literacy practices of Kalika, a three-year-old child with Rett syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, to elucidate how she engages with printed text. Rett syndrome leads to near total loss of verbal communication and limited functional hand use, making it particularly challenging to participate in traditionally recognized forms of literacy engagement. Using in-depth qualitative data from both in- and out-of-school settings, we conduct a micro-level analysis of Kalika’s behaviours during story time rituals. In order to bring analytic coherence to the data, we classified her modalities of literacy engagement under two broad categories: 1) kinesics, which included a) corporal (entailing full body positioning and motion), b) oral (involving contact with mouth or expression), c) oculesics (relating to eye gaze), and d) haptic (relating to hands) elements as well as 2) vocalics (pertaining to vocal tone and vocalisation). Our analysis elucidates the sophisticated, complex multimodal practices that Kalika enacts to engage with texts. For far too long, students with significant disabilities have been viewed from deficit perspectives, neglected within the literature as well as in the classroom, and thought to require additional instruction to learn how to engage with texts. We suggest that perhaps it is a question, instead, of educators and scholars learning to expand their own frames of reference.

Positive Psychology can help overcome the pernicious native speaker ideology

The world of applied linguistics and the profession of foreign language teaching needs to finally sweep away the notion of “Native Speaker” (NS) and the deficit perspective surrounding foreign language learners. We argue that Positive Psychology is a source of inspiration for a new and more positive perspective on foreign language learners and users. Rather than obsessing about negative aspects of life, Positive Psychologists defend a more holistic perspective. By transforming the view of learners as failed “NS” of the target language to that of increasingly competent and happy users of a foreign language would lift a huge burden from the shoulders of foreign language learners and their teachers alike. We argue that the unexpected longevity and ubiquity of the NS in the foreign language teaching profession are its deep historical roots in linguistics and culture, and that only a radical paradigm shift can dislodge it.

Kids Reading Tanakh: The Child as Interpreter

This essay examines two fourth-grade students’ task-based read-aloud interviews on the biblical text of Numbers 13. Taking up the New London Group’s call for a pedagogy of multiliteracies this article examines how educators and adults might sensitize themselves to the interpretive identities children bring to their reading of biblical texts. This work is intricately tied to child development, as we move religious education from a deficit model and perspective towards the child to a more welcoming asset model and perspective.

Supporting Multilingual Black Children: Building on Black Language Genius

AbstractNegative societal beliefs and language ideologies about Black Language speakers continue to shape how Black Language is perceived from deficit perspectives in schools. However, educators must challenge these negative ideologies by amplifying the rich linguistic features that Black Language speakers already have by positioning these language practices as valuable resources in the classroom. From translanguaging and critical perspectives, the authors demonstrate how multilingual Black American children use various complex language and literacy practices to make sense of their worlds, including vignettes from bilingual classrooms and childhood memories. The authors offer practical implications using classroom and community examples that can serve as models to educators on how to support and build upon the richness of Black Language speakers’ literacy and language practices.

The Impact of Analyzing Young Adult Literature for Racial Identity / Social Justice Orientation with Interdisciplinary Students

ABSTRACT Research suggests that students need authenticity by welcoming their stories, even causing tension and discomfort with complex topics, encouraging discussion, and questioning. Our study explores undergraduates’ open-ended reflections on using young adult literature to challenge dominant, deficit perspectives about themselves and others, which is not yet the norm but more common in high school settings. We explored how students questioned their implicit biases and assumptions toward a more critically aware identity through a holistic qualitative case study. Our analysis of students’ open-ended reflections produced three major themes: (a) Importance of Diverse Books and Analysis; (b) Books as an Impetus for a Change in Thinking and Awareness of Self; and (c) Lingering Tensions and Ongoing Resistance. Although many students expressed a change in thinking, there were still instances that reflected resistance.

The (In)Visibility of Race in School Discipline Across Urban, Suburban, and Exurban Contexts

Background/Context: Racial disparities in school discipline represent a long-standing injustice in U.S. schools. Students of color, particularly Black students, are systematically subjected to harsher school disciplinary actions compared with their peers. A growing body of evidence demonstrates the severity of the problem and the negative consequences of harsh punishment, particularly given that students who are disciplined are more likely to be forced into the complex nexus of education and incarceration. Focus of Study: In this study, we aimed to understand how different racial contexts in urban, suburban, and exurban schools shaped responses to and understandings about racial disparities in school discipline. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that centers the visibility and invisibility of race (Artiles, 2019) throughout the disciplinary cycle, this study was guided by two research questions: (1) What are the similarities and differences in educators’ and students’ understandings of racial contexts and racial disparities in school discipline across urban, suburban, and exurban school districts? (2) How do urban, suburban, and exurban school districts’ racial contexts shape educators’ responses to racial disparities in discipline? Research Design: This research was part of a larger mixed-methods research–practice partnership that aimed to understand racial disparities in school discipline and how to address them across varying school contexts in Central Virginia. The qualitative portion of the study included individual and focus group interviews and classroom observations. The findings reported in this article focus specifically on 50 individual and focus group interviews with teachers, leaders, staff, and students. Findings: Our findings demonstrate the ways race was made visible and invisible in responses to and understandings about racial disparities in discipline. This was evident in the ways deficit perspectives were racialized and how race-evasive perspectives and ideologies dominated educators’ responses to the problem. We found these responses were mediated by the racial contexts of each school. For instance, we learned that educators at the urban middle school with a majority of Black and Latinx students were the most willing to discuss the role of race and racism in shaping racial disparities in discipline compared with educators at the suburban and exurban schools. Educators at the racially diverse suburban high school focused on socioeconomic diversity and relied on deficit cultural explanations for poverty. Contrastingly, educators at the exurban school openly discussed its racial homogeneity with its mostly White students, and their language regarding racial disparities was laced with race-evasive terms and some racist perspectives. Across suburban and exurban school contexts, many educators adopted race-evasive and deficit rationales for disproportionality in ways that failed to consider the role of the school in disciplinary outcomes. We also found that students across the three school contexts were more willing than educators to discuss the role of race and racism in explaining disparities in discipline. Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings from this study have important implications for how schools can respond more effectively to racial disparities in discipline. First, it is important that schools create policies and practices that provide clear guidelines to promote racial equity in discipline. Data should therefore be collected, shared, discussed, analyzed, and used to inform how to improve disciplinary practices and interventions at multiple intersections (e.g., by race, gender, socioeconomic status, and disability) given research that demonstrates disproportionality in discipline emerges among students of color and multiply-marginalized students. Second, schools must critically examine how their everyday beliefs about race become enacted in practice and ultimately institutionalized, thereby granting privileges to dominant groups. Third, schools can benefit from including and engaging with students as they reform disciplinary procedures to address racial disparities. Ultimately, disrupting racial inequities in discipline requires responses that include engagement with race and racism in ways that attend to both individual beliefs and school policies and practices.

Pedagogies implemented with young people with refugee backgrounds in physical education and sport: a critical review of the literature

ABSTRACT The field of physical education (PE), sport, and forced migration studies has grown considerably in recent years. Although we have seen an increase in publications in the field, no reviews of pedagogies regarding people with refugee backgrounds in PE and sport have been published to date. The purpose of this review is to critically examine pedagogies implemented with young people with refugee backgrounds in PE and sport. Using Freirean critical pedagogy as an analytical lens, we identified two themes: (a) the need to overcome cultural deficit perspectives by engaging in dialogue with the young people and (b) the need to move from assimilationist to co-designed ways of working with the young people in PE and sport. We outline directions and critical challenges for future research on the relationship between young people with refugee backgrounds and pedagogies implemented in PE and sport.

Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism, and the Right to the Mexican City by Diana Negrín

Reviewed by: Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism, and the Right to the Mexican City by Diana Negrín Luis Urrieta (bio) and Judith Landeros (bio) Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism, and the Right to the Mexican City by Diana Negrín University of Arizona Press, 2019 IN RACIAL ALTERITY, WIXARIK A YOUTH ACTIVISM, and the Right to the Mexican City, Diana Negrín powerfully transcends the racial stereotypes that confine Indigenous people to the past, to specific notions of authenticity, or to particular landscapes, namely rural areas. Centering the lives of Wixarika youth activists, she richly illustrates how Wixaritari urban youth in the Mexican cities of Guadalajara and Tepic contest and negotiate in multiple ways the stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, ascribed notions of cultural authenticity, racial alterity, and spatial belonging (6). Negrín troubles historically paternalistic and essentialized indigenista racial imaginaries tied to narrow notions of indigeneity and the politics of authenticity by spatially grounding her work in conversation within urban studies, critical race studies, and critical Indigenous studies. Negrín begins by foregrounding indigenismo as the state ideology that at different historical moments has framed the Mexican nation's racial imaginary and tried to contain its racial alterity by addressing Indigenous peoples as a "problem." She particularly situates how indigenismo frames Indigenous peoples in deficit ways, as culturally and geographically homogeneous, belonging to specific places, and limited to a physical and temporal space (25, 39, 49). Continuing her analysis of indigenismo, in chapter 2 she examines Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) "development" programs that emerged from acción indigenista national projects to solve the "Indian problem" in Mexico. Specifically, in Wixarika territory (53) starting in the 1960s, such projects caused displacement and migration for wage labor and the commercialization of Wixarika art but enhanced access to higher education in urban centers such as Tepic and Guadalajara (83). In chapter 3, Negrín restories through a historical geography of the city of Tepic, Nayarit, how the Wixarika and Náayeri have been simultaneously included within and excluded from the city (86). In chapter 4, she describes two projects led by Wikaritari university students in Guadalajara [End Page 206] that promote the diversity of Indigenous presences and spatial and civic belonging in the city, projects that simultaneously disrupt the Euro-mestizo Tapatío narrative rooted in Guadalajara's colonial foundation and enduring characterization (143, 149). In chapters 3 and 4, Negrín articulates the historical development of Guadalajara and Tepic to trace from the colonial to current era how the geography of race and race relations in Latin America, mestizaje, multiculturalism, and indigenismo has shaped the social imaginaries of Indigenous people in Mexico. Lastly, in chapter 5, Negrín centers makuyeika (individual who walks in many places) to show how Wixaritari urban youth embody "the importance of geography in the formation of individual and collective identities, in a way that disrupts entrenched narratives of indigenous mobility" (16). Makuyeika illuminates the ways Wixaritari university students and professionals express their activism to shift Mexico's racial and spatial imaginary and call for a heterogenous citizenship that recognizes Indigenous peoples in Mexico (182). Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism, and the Right to the Mexican City's unique contribution is Negrín's focus on Indigenous youth, their agency and activism for recognition and reterritorialization in urban spaces. Her five-year ethnographic collaborative work with the Wixaritari university students and professionals highlights how Wixaritari youth assert their political, geographic, and cultural identities. She counters deficit perspectives of Indigenous people, highlighting generations of Indigenous activists and professionals, especially Wixarika educators, who have demanded cultural rights, navigated school institutions, and advocated for their children in the educational system. Negrín highlights how these professionals and university students have become truly pluricultural and plurilingual and continue to challenge the enduring and denigrating societal scripts and racial maps that attempt to universalize Indigenous peoples' experiences in Mexico. Such professional Wixaritari and also multigeneration family friends facilitated Diana Negrín's access and entry into the relational commitments to the Wixarika communities that are the focus of this book. These lifelong ties and enduring relations make Negrín's work in and beyond this book a beautiful exemplar of community-centered...