Becca Price: “Reframing Educational Outcomes”

In collaboration with Sarita Shukla (School of Educational Studies), Elli Theobald (Department of Biology, UW Seattle), and Joel Abraham (CSU Fullerton), IAS faculty member Becca Price has published an essay about how to honor and build from the strengths that students bring into the classroom.

“So much of traditional teaching,” Price says, “uses a deficit approach. When students don’t do well on a test, the conclusion is often that they didn’t do the work they needed to do to prepare, or that their high school didn’t teach them how to take tests, or that there’s someone or something to blame for their performance. Instead, we can take a more asset-based approach. Everyone enters the classroom with skills—which may or may not include test-taking—and equitable learning relies on that suite of skills.”

In the essay, “Reframing Educational Outcomes: Moving beyond Achievement Gaps,” Price and her colleagues review other scholars’ work to discuss the history of deficit-based classrooms and educational research, pointing out the racist legacies embedded in that view. They suggest other frameworks that researchers can use to study classrooms and that instructors can implement for more just teaching.