Disrupting the Deficit-Gaze: Building Asset Language With Teacher Candidates

Introduction

The language teachers use to discuss students and student learning matters. Students whose teachers construct them in deficit terms are less likely than their peers to experience supportive teacher interactions or responsive instruction (Bruton & Robles-Piña, 2009; Flint & Jaggers, 2021; Garcia & Guerra, 2004). Despite the consequences of deficit framing, many K-12 teachers use deficit-oriented discourse to describe students in their classrooms. Thus, a crucial task of teacher preparation programs is to cultivate asset-based perspectives toward students among teacher candidates. Such perspectives serve as indicators regarding whether a teacher candidate holds a dispositional commitment to the learning of every student.

Through this study, the researchers pursued a dynamic understanding of teacher candidates’ discursive constructions of students and student learning over the course of a 12-month graduate teacher preparation program. By investigating the evolution of teacher candidate discourse with regard to students across the pre-service year, the authors aimed to generate knowledge to support teacher educators in nurturing asset-based perspectives among their graduates. Using an asset-based stance (i.e., commitment to fostering growth and learning in all students) is an essential disposition and, as such, can be predictive of future patterns of action in the classroom (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007).

The professional accreditation requirements for educator preparation programs all include language around teacher candidate dispositions; however, there is variation in how dispositions are defined by different accrediting bodies. Some definitions are vague (e.g., The habits of professional action and moral commitments that underlie an educator’s performance) (Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation [CAEP], 2015) while others leave the definition of specific dispositions up to the individual programs (e.g., dispositions and behaviors required for successful professional practice) (Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation [AAQEP], 2019), and all such definitions merit examination in terms of whose notions of “professional” or “moral” they center. Regardless of the specific definition, each set of requirements and standards guiding teacher preparation programs places importance on educators using asset-based perspectives toward students, families, and the communities they serve in order to create inclusive learning environments and meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse student populations (AAQEP, 2019; CAEP, 2015; Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium [InTASC], 2013). For example, the InTASC Standards include language of belief in students: “The teacher believes that all learners can achieve at high levels and persists in helping each learner reach his/her full potential” (InTASC, 2013). The recently revised CAEP standards include language around understanding personal biases, and the ability to work with traditionally marginalized or minoritized P-12 students and their families (CAEP, 2022). And, AAQEP Standards state that program completers will, “Understand and engage local school and cultural communities, and communicate and foster relationships with families/guardians/caregivers in a variety of communities, [and] engage in culturally responsive educational practices with diverse learners and do so in diverse cultural and socioeconomic community contexts” (AAQEP, 2019).

Because the potential impact of a teacher disposition lies in how that disposition animates the teacher’s practice, it is important to examine not only teacher candidates’ broadly held values (e.g., equity), but also to understand how dispositions are applied to perceptions of and interactions with individual students and their families. While the teacher preparation program described in this chapter focuses extensively on equity and social justice in coursework, faculty observed a gap between the notions of equity and social justice embraced by teacher candidates in the abstract and those teacher candidates’ framing of specific students in their placement classrooms. This study was prompted by researcher observations of the casual use of deficit language by teacher candidates when describing students, their families, and their communities. Discourse among some teacher candidates revealed assumptions about students living in poverty, the priorities of their families, and the support those children might receive—or not receive—outside of school. While teacher candidates typically embraced the broad notions of equity and social justice in their discourse and writing, their language use also reflected a dispositional gap between their broadly held principles and the ways they were constructing students in asset and deficit terms.