Getting Out of Deficit: Pedagogies of reconnection

Abstract

The fact that children growing up in poverty are likely to be in the lower ranges of achievement on standardised literacy tests is not a new phenomenon. Internationally there are a myriad of intervention and remedial programmes designed to address this problem with a range of effects. Frequently, sustainable reforms are curtailed by de®cit views of families and children growing up in poverty. This article describes an ongoing research study entitled``Teachers Investigate Unequal Literacy Outcomes: Cross-Generational Perspectives'', which made teacher researchers central in examining this long-standing dilemma. It outlines the research design and rationale, and analyses how two early career teachers worked their ways out of de®cit analyses of two children they were most worried about. It argues that disrupting de®cit discourses and redesigning new pedagogical repertoires to reconnect with children's lifeworlds is a long-term project that can best be achieved in reciprocal research relationships with teachers.

Practicing Teachers’ Reflections: Indigenous Australian Student Mobility and Implications for Teacher Education

“…Advice for teachers provided by Comber that resonate with the findings from research into the education of the children of itinerant fruit pickers in Queensland, Australia (Henderson & Woods, 2012), includes learning about students, their families and communities and understanding and incorporating into their teaching the funds of knowledge that students bring with them to school. Both Comber and Kamler (2004) and Henderson and Woods (2012) noted that this more positive approach helped to undermine deficit discourses that are more common when teachers do not have close connections with students' families and communities. Comber promoted a more socially-just approach that broke down assumptions that teachers may have of some students that serve to maintain past predictable patterns of disadvantage.…”

“…While Comber and Kamler (2004) focused on just two case studies of first year teachers who became coresearchers in their "Getting out of deficit: Pedagogies of reconnection" project, they also explained the role of the more experienced teachers who partnered the new teachers on a one-to-one basis for the project. The changes that occurred in the first year teachers' pedagogical practices during the research were quite marked and probably would not have occurred had it not been for the research project and for the connections that the teachers made with the families of the students whom they considered to be at-risk.…”

Funds of knowledge—a conceptual critique

“…The funds of knowledge approach to teacher development has also influenced projects in Australia and in the UK, where it has been used in communities with low socio-economic status as well as those of ethnic minorities (e.g. Comber and Kamler 2004;Hughes et al 2005).…”

“…(p.1) González et al (1993:11) suggest that teacher-research within a funds of knowledge approach can result in 'pivotal and transformative shifts in teachers and in relations between households and schools and between parents and teachers' (p. 4). Comber and Kamler (2004) describe these fundamental and lasting paradigm shifts as 'turn-around pedagogies', which not only result in classroom curricula and activities matched to student interests, but also a lasting shift in the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of teachers towards their students and their communities, from a view of deficit to one of respect and understanding. This transformative power seems equally relevant in an adult literacy and numeracy context, in which deficit models tend to dominate (Papen 2005;Oughton 2007 …”

Who Has Rights to What? Inclusion in Australian Early Childhood Programs

“…There is separate consideration in the early childhood literature of ability categories such as chronic ill health, disability, giftedness and learning difficulty (Ashton & Bailey, 2004;Porter, 2005;Hay & Fielding-Barnsley, 2006;Foreman, 2008) and of cultural categories such as indigeneity, refugee status, geographic mobility, rural isolation, gender, non-traditional family, religion and socioeconomic status (Sims et al, 2000;Frigo & Adams, 2002;Nyland, 2001;Raban, 2002;Comber & Kamler, 2004;Henderson, 2004;Ashman, 2005;Rhedding-Jones, 2005;Vuckovic, 2008). Such separation of equity categories fails to take into account the argument in the international literature that narrow views of inclusion focusing on single issues such as disability, rather than multiple forms of inequality, are a barrier to understanding inclusion and to effective education that supports all children (Ng, 2003;Nutbrown & Clough, 2006;Siraj-Blatchford, 2006).…”