Deficit Thinking

The world that we are living is changing at an astonishing rate, far distinctive then at any other time in history. The explosion of technology and the Internet has flattened the world like never before. Economics, employment, and social interacts have moved from the borders of towns and countries to anywhere in the world. Being in education for the last twenty years, I have seen drastic changes in how this sudden increase in technology has affected people and the learning process. For the first time we have children in schools who are totally digital natives being taught by teachers who have not embraced the use of technology as a way of delivering content and project based learning. To further the learning gap is the need for this generation to be connected socially at all times. Educators today should embrace and use social networks to advance the learning process of our children and students.

Most teachers today view their students through a deficit lens. When teachers say students are not motivated, unprepared for the academic rigor, students are at-risk, or live in a high minority or low-income community we do the best we can. This is deficit thinking, is when a person views another person or situation in a deficit nature without really knowing the student or situation. They use this deficit thinking to justify the means of low academic achievement or the reasons as to why they cannot do more activities in the classroom. We also see this deficit thinking with teachers about technology, social networking, and change in general. Teachers have a strong need to be in control of students, why? They control the workload, the acceptable academic products, and acceptable classroom behavior. 

With the increased numbers of minority students attending primary and secondary schools for a longer period of time, a defined achievement gap rise between whites and minority students. Technology access will be a defining factor for low-income students. This to will lead to an increase in deficit thinking paradigms in education. We need to develop professional development activities to help teacher over come the deficit thinking paradigms that they bring to the class to increase student achievement.