Thinking Outside of the Box: Beyond Deficit Thinking in Western Schools

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Anticolonial Resistance and Knowledge-Based Systems (Table 2)

Abstract

Students from linguistic, cultural, and economic minorities encounter numerous difficulties in Western education that are often comprehended through the lens of deficit thinking (Yosso, 2005). Deficit thinking provided a theoretical-scholarly underpinning to a compensatory (and assimilationist) approach to practice involving students from “different” socio-cultural situations. We hypothesize that the “coloniality of knowledge” (Quijano, 1992) provided fertile ground for its development and spread (Author, 2022).
The decolonial approach (Mignolo, Walsh, 2018) offers a key for re-examining deficit-thinking theory, enabling some understanding of why – despite the work of academics and teacher-education initiatives – deficit thinking remains so pervasive in contemporary imaginations, habits, and school systems.
The theoretical contribution presented here is based on a traditional literature review (Pope, Mays, Popay, 2007).

Author

• Paola Dusi, Università degli studi di Verona