What's Training Got to Do With It?: Educator Preparation Programs and Deficit Thinking

Introduction

Have you ever found yourself complaining without a good reason, seeing the negative side of a scenario, focusing on a minor complaint over ten compliments, or noticing what a child cannot do over what they can do in the classroom? This is the nature of deficit thinking, and considering this persistent and pervasive notion, this chapter will explore how educator preparation programs (EPPs) are preparing teacher candidates for the classroom, and where deficit thinking of P-12 students with disabilities permeates schools. To begin, there are multiple models of disability used for defining purposes, but the two predominant models that may or may not be taught explicitly regarding students with a disability are the medical model and the social model.

The medical model says that disability exists within an individual and is consequently a deficiency that may or may not be curable (Andrews, 2017; Kirk et al., 2015; Shume, 2020). The term disability itself is medical and implies what an individual cannot do and may go so far as to portray students as incapable and disengaged (Heward et al., 2017). For example, the medical model reinforces having a student who is deaf receive a cochlear implant or wear hearing aids to fix their impairment. Conversely, the social model says disability is a social construct that exists due to cultural and social influence, meaning an individual does not need to be cured or healed (Andrews, 2017; Beaudry, 2016; Shume, 2020). Holding to the social model, a student who is deaf would learn to read lips but does not have anything inherently wrong with which needs to be fixed or medically corrected with surgery or a device. When the social model was introduced, social psychologist Beatrice Wright began advocating for identity-first language (Andrews, 2017). Identity-first language shifts the focus from the disability that refers to a “deaf student” to referring to the student as a “student who is deaf.” Currently, there is a push from many individuals with disabilities who want to be recognized by their disability, but not because it is a deficit. Those individuals want to celebrate their disability as a unique trait and part of their identity and are happy to be the deaf student or autistic student (Andrews, 2017). The community of several disabilities including the Deaf, Blind, and autistic prefer identify-first language, and so will be used throughout this chapter when referring to disabiled students receiving special education services.