MCC Daily Tribune
TCC: Announcing Our Theme for 2022-23: "Ditching Deficit-Based Pedagogy: Leveraging Student Assets"
“Equity cannot live where deficit ideology lives.” –Paul Gorski, Equity Literacy Institute*
During her workshop at the Teaching and Creativity Center's June 2022 Teaching & Learning Conference, Dr. Isis Artze-Vega reminded us several times that equity-minded teaching is not a single, one-and-done thing. It encompasses a variety of practices we can adopt to make our classrooms more equitable for students.
One such practice was our focus last year: Pedagogies of Care (which Dr. Artze-Vega conceptualized as teaching from and through love). Another equity practice is the topic we’re taking on this year: asset-based pedagogies.
We’ve given our theme this mouthful of a title: Ditching Deficit-Based Pedagogy: Leveraging Student Assets. That’s because we can’t really speak about asset-based teaching practices before we address what it aims to replace: what Paul Gorski and others refer to as deficit ideology or deficit thinking.
As Richard R. Valencia explains in the opening chapter of Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking : Educational Thought and Practice, "The deficit thinking model, at its core, is an endogenous theory — positing that the student who fails in school does so because of his/her internal deficits or deficiencies. Such deficits manifest, adherents allege, in limited intellectual abilities, linguistic shortcomings, lack of motivation to learn, and immoral behavior. The proposed transmitters of these deficits vary according to the intellectual and scholarly climate of the times" (p. 6-7).
Deficit thinking is so ingrained, so rote for most educators, that many of us don’t recognize it as such. But pause for a moment to consider whether these statements sound familiar:
- “These students just don’t care about their education.”
- “Students these days don’t know how to think.”
- “What can you expect? They come from unstable homes.”
- “No one in my class can write a proper sentence.”
- “Our graduation rates are so low because most of our students come from city schools.”
- “My students are uneducable.”
- “Have you seen their placement scores? They're in for a rude awakening."
It takes lots of different forms, but deficit thinking operates according to a primary underlying assumption: it reduces problems to some lack or fault in the individual experiencing them. It’s a form of stereotyping, or attribution bias. It’s very sneaky and pervasive—even among those who are are otherwise caring, devoted educators.
So what, instead, is asset-based pedagogy? How might we resist the easy answers that deficit thinking affords, and commit anew to equitable, relationship-rich education?
Those are the questions that will guide the TCC’s programming this year. We won’t answer them for you, or provide you with quick, easy fixes. But we aim to engage with you in conversation, opportunities for reflection, and resources for your own professional learning and practice. (Check out, for example, our digital library for Asset-Based Pedagogy)
Mark your calendars for our fall Conversations series, where we’ll start this work together:
Monday, Sept. 19, 12:00-12:50 PM, Zoom-only
Asset-Based Pedagogy: An Introductory Conversation
(facilitated by Bob Muhlnickel and Betty Mandly)
Tuesday, Oct. 18, 12:30-1:30 PM, in 12-201 with Zoom option
Healing-Centered Engagement: A Framework for Asset-Based Pedagogy
(facilitated by April Daniels)
Wednesday, Nov. 16, 12:00-12:50 PM, in 12-201 with Zoom option
Asset-Based Approaches in Developing and Delivering Pedagogy Online
(facilitated by Andrea Gilbert and Renee Dimino)
Be on the lookout for separate Trib announcements and Events Calendar listings for more details, including Zoom links.
And please see the full lineup of other TCC programs for opportunities to explore our theme and related topics further, including book groups and RPGs.
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* Check with Amanda Colosimo and Terry Shamblin to see whether there are any spots still available for the course license that the TCC purchased during the 2020-21 academic year.
Also, we received permission from Paul Gorski himself to use or modify the title of his course, "Ditching Deficit Ideology," for our theme title. We opted for modifying it.
Amy Burtner
Teaching and Creativity Center
09/02/2022