Rings of Culture - School Psychologist Pathway - [Activity]

“When operating from a deficit thinking paradigm, educators and policymakers believe that culturally and linguistically diverse students fail in school because of their own deficiencies or because their families don’t value education, not because of social inequities, unfair school policies, or differential treatment in the classroom. There is an ill-informed belief that a student’s failures are attributable to the student’s lack of intellectual ability, linguistic inferiority, or family dysfunction. This deficit perspective suggests that efforts to improve academic achievement should focus on “fixing” students (i.e. improving test-taking skills) rather than shifting the school culture to support intellective capacity building and identity-safe classrooms so that students can access their academic potential. As a result, teachers' deficit-oriented attributions of student performance influence their instructional decision making, resulting in giving students less opportunity for engaging curricula, interesting tasks, and culturally congruent ways of learning.”

Zaretta Hammond, Deficit Thinking Paradigm