by Mitch Lorenz, Instructional Developer, Reinert Center
With midterms recently passing, now is an ideal time to reflect on how we react to student performance in our classrooms. As an instructor, it can be especially disheartening when students do poorly on tests or assignments. How we react to these situations can serve as a reflection of our attitudes toward teaching. The role of culture in this is often understated, but academic culture in the U.S. tends to emphasize individual responsibility over collective efforts (e.g., Chavez & Longerbeam, 2016). It may seem intuitive, then, to react to poor student performance with thoughts like “they didn’t prepare” or “they lack the skills needed.” Patterns of behavior amongst students may also lead to other interpretations. Perhaps they are suffering as a result of the pandemic, or they weren’t fully prepared for college due to their education prior to entering higher education.
It is far less likely that we think “I didn’t prepare the students properly” or “the students did not have a chance to apply their existing strengths.” People, in general, tend to make self-serving attributions, taking credit for good things and blaming failure on the environment. Faculty are no exception to this trend (e.g., McAllister, 1996) and some attributions of student failure may even impede faculty motivation to make efforts or take responsibility (Georgiou et al., 2002). Additionally, there is a tendency for attributions to focus on students lacking necessary skills or capabilities, especially if they are from low socio-economic or historically oppressed populations (e.g., Davis & Museus, 2019)
It is easy to recognize that this form of deficit thinking is problematic, when considered broadly, but that doesn’t make avoiding it any easier when the focus is on other topics. If you’re looking for explanations for why students performed poorly on their midterms, and there is a natural bias to make attributions that protect your own feelings of self-efficacy, you may engage in deficit thinking without realizing it. Mindfulness of these things is effortful, and this time of year is one where extra energy is hard to come by! Even those who speak out about deficit thinking can end up doing so in a way that reinforces a deficit-focus by emphasizing cultural or individual factors (Davis & Museus, 2019).
Deficit thinking can also occur for students in their attributions of their own behavior, blaming their previous education or other factors (e.g., Avila Reyes et al., 2023). As we return from spring break with the opportunity to apply these lessons, remaining aware of these implicit tendencies can help with recognizing deficit thinking. Whether it’s in your own reactions to student performance or students’ reactions to their own work, reframing how you interact with student culture and performance in your classroom can have positive impacts on learning. One way to do this is to shift from “fixing” skills or capabilities that are “lacking” toward an approach on giving students different way to apply existing strengths they already possess. In a review of research that has applied Yosso’s (2005) cultural wealth model, Reyes & Duran (2021) note two consistent but simple recommendations that can help apply a strengths-based approach as opposed to a deficit mindset. The first was increasing culturally critical perspectives in the classroom, making culture more explicit even in fields where there may be a historical Eurocentric bias. The second was simply vocalizing and recognizing the value of cultural wealth, perhaps allowing students to recognize capabilities and skills they possess that they may not have seen as applicable in the higher-education context. Self-reflection and small changes in how we approach a topic like deficit thinking can go a long way! For more details about techniques to avoid deficit thinking, see this resource guide!
Resources:
Ávila Reyes, N., Navarro, F., & Tapia-Ladino, M. (2023). “My abilities were pretty mediocre”: Challenging deficit discourses in expanding higher education systems. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 16(6), 723–733. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000366
Chávez, A. F., & Longerbeam, S. D. (2016). Teaching across cultural strengths: A guide to balancing integrated and individuated cultural frameworks in college teaching. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Davis, L. P., & Museus, S. D. (2019). What is deficit thinking? An analysis of conceptualizations of deficit thinking and implications for scholarly research. NCID Currents, 1(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/currents.17387731.0001.110
Georgiou, S. N., Christou, C., Stavrinides, P., & Panaoura, G. (2002). Teacher attributions of student failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student. Psychology in the Schools, 39(5), 583-595. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.10049
McAllister, H. A. (1996). Self-serving bias in the classroom: Who shows it? Who knows it?. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(1), 123. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.88.1.123
Reyes, H. L., & Duran, A. (2021). Higher education scholars challenging deficit thinking: An analysis of research informed by community cultural wealth. Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, 6(1), 7-20. Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006
The Notebook 