Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking

by Richard R. Valencia

Deficit thinking is a pseudoscience founded on racial and class bias. It "blames the victim" for school failure instead of examining how schools are structured to prevent poor students and students of color from learning. Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking provides comprehensive critiques and anti-deficit thinking alternatives to this oppressive theory by framing the linkages between prevailing theoretical perspectives and contemporary practices within the complex historical development of deficit thinking. Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking examines the ongoing social construction of deficit thinking in three aspects of current discourse – the genetic pathology model, the culture of poverty model, and the "at-risk" model in which poor students, students of color, and their families are pathologized and marginalized. Richard R. Valencia challenges these three contemporary components of the deficit thinking theory by providing incisive critiques and discussing competing explanations for the pervasive school failure of many students in the nation’s public schools. Valencia also discusses a number of proactive, anti-deficit thinking suggestions from the fields of teacher education, educational leadership, and educational ethnography that are intended to provide a more equitable and democratic schooling for all students.

Genres: Education

248 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2010

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're inclined toward reading academic writing about education for fun, you might also find this book very informative, particularly if you work in education or an education-adjacent field. If any of "hegemonic," "correlation coefficient," or "post-Marxist" make you break into a nervous sweat, maybe be a sane person and move along.

[Mai · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very solid and informative but wow that was dry.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deficit thinking is a bad thing. There is no question about it. However, Valencia takes it to an extremely radical place where he absolves stakeholders, except for teachers and staff, of their responsibilities in education. Reading this book was a horrible experience, the worst I have read in my master's program. You are much better off reading Nieto and Bode's Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education or Sleeter's Un-Standardizing the Curriculum. These authors do not list off complaints, but give pragmatic solutions to modern educational problems.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for one of my education classes. It made a lot of interesting points and discussed some major problems in our education system, like the tendency to victim blame - pinning underachievement a student's personal characteristics (deficit thinking). All in all, it was a great book, but I don't think I'm quite ready for something so heavily academic. This is a good resource for someone into academia and education, but for an undergrad like me, it was a bit hard to follow.