Furthermore, learning about and challenging deficit thinking to inform critical research can minimize the likelihood that such concepts would be misunderstood in ways that devalue equity-oriented research. Doing so would not only maximize appropriate application of anti-deficit frames but also help readers understand the difference between using deficit lenses and critiquing deficit thinking for the purposes of producing critical research.
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For these reasons, scholars should be able to identify key elements of deficit thinking and know how to analyze, critique, and apply anti-deficit framing accurately and constructively.
Much remains to be learned about deficit thinking, and it is likely that analyses in this area will increase in the coming decades as scholars aspire to produce more critical research. In any of these examples, scholars might experience confusion about what represents deficit thinking and the best way to move their research forward using anti-deficit approaches. Moreover, we have mentored doctoral students who were, in fact, engaging in deficit thinking and ultimately worked to shift their dissertation to be anti-deficit. We have also mentored emerging scholars who experience angst from fear that their work might be perceived as promoting deficit thinking. For example, we have heard stories about emerging scholars’ research being rejected from journals because it represents deficit thinking, even when their work appears to be anti-deficit in nature. Given these disparate applications, it might be difficult to ascertain what actually constitutes deficit thinking in scholarly circles. Finally, several researchers apply the concept of deficit thinking in their analyses without explicitly defining it (Cooper, Cooper, & Baker, 2016 Corcoran, 2015 Hardy & Woodcock, 2015 Humphries, 2013). Second, a handful of researchers cite similar definitions of deficit thinking and highlight the ways in which these views blame the victim but then go on to suggest that deficit thinking might be sufficiently characterized by discussion of “unfavorable conditions,” the existence of “environmental” challenges, or racial disparities in educational outcomes (Banks, 2014 Poon et al., 2016). First, the vast majority of scholars engaging deficit thinking in their work define it as a blame the victim way of thinking that attribute students’ failures to their individual, family, or community traits, and utilize this definition throughout their analyses (Bruton & Robles-Piña, 2009 McKay & Devlin, 2016 Haggis, 2006 Solórzano & Yosso, 2001 Valencia, 1997, 2010 Weiner, 2003). Over the last decade, scholars have utilized the concept of deficit thinking in at least three different ways, contributing to growing confusion and misinterpretation within this literature. Overall, these perspectives serve as tools that maintain hegemonic systems and, in doing so, fail to place accountability with oppressive structures, policies, and practices within educational settings.
In general, deficit thinking holds students from historically oppressed populations responsible for the challenges and inequalities that they face (Bruton & Robles-Piña, 2009 Haggis, 2006 McKay & Devlin, 2016 Solórzano & Yosso, 2001 Valencia, 1997, 2010 Weiner, 2003). Although deficit thinking has existed for well over a century (Menchaca, 1997), scholarly analyses of it have become increasingly common over the last two decades.
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