Abstract
This paper explores kindergarten and 1st grade teachers’ beliefs about students in an urban elementary school. Teachers situated concerns about a new literacy program and benchmark goals within an ideology that pathologized poor students of color as being academically unprepared. Teachers’ claims were corroborated by their grade-level administrator. However, an analysis of student performance data revealed educators’ pathological beliefs to be unwarranted. Deficit beliefs about the capabilities of the poor students of color were associated with fear of failure, uncritical acceptance of poverty as brain trauma, and their ascription to negative views about poor and minority students.
Recommended Citation
Parker, Lynette; Reid, Charlene; and Ghans, Tanya
(2017)
"Challenging deficit default and educators’ biases in urban schools,"
Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice: Vol. 2:
No.
3, Article 1.
Available at:
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/rpj/vol2/iss3/1
Included in
Education Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons