2.5 DEFICIT THEORY AND TRANSACTIONAL DISTANCE THEORY
2.5.1 D EFICIT THEORY
2.5.1.2 Components of the deficit theory of education
The space of deficit theory of education in the promulgated literature is chock-full with writings on students’ lack of cognitive learning abilities and their failures to achieve learning goals, but studies that identify and expound the blocks on which the theory is build are scrubby. One popular theorist who recently identified the elements of the much educationally entrenched deficit theory is Richard Valencia. This guru theorises that the deficit theory is constituted by six characteristics (Valencia, 2012) that are viewed and expounded, in this study as components – namely, blaming the victim,
temporal changes, oppression, heterodoxy, pseudoscience and educability. The ensuing section provides explanations of these six components.
Blaming the victim
The axiom ‘blaming the victim’ was originally invented by William Ryan during an epoch when the theoretical discourse on the deficit theory was at its pinnacle in 1971 as a title of the book which was destined to respond to deficit thoughts and policies developed around 1960s (Valencia, 2012, p. 3). Extending the remit of deficit theory to comprise other areas of social sciences, such as health care and race relations, William Ryan blamed victims for their dire situations (for instance, poverty, being illiterate, and untreated diseases), arguing that they have negative attitudes towards an education; that they are ignorant to their health status and that they do not quest for information about their health (Ryan, 1971, p. 7-8) and must therefore be persuaded to change their attitudes and behaviours (p. 8). Ryan’s (1971) assertion closely parallel that of Vaughan (1968) who argued that students drop out of their studies because they either have intellectual or psychological deficiencies. Both Ryan and Vaughan put blame to students for their discontinued learning. Deficit theory is thus founded on a blame directed to students who academically perform below the required standard (Valencia, 2010). To assist deficient students, programmes, over the decades, have been developed and implemented in academic learning institutions well as governments. In the context of health care, for instance, Ryan (p. 7) pointed out that support intervention programmes, which are aimed at attempting to stimulate victims to improve their competencies and abilities and to take health-related issues mindful, are put into place. Examined within the arena of education, deficit theorists postulate that students’ failure in their studies or dropping out of enrolled courses (or programmes or academic institutions) is a result of them being ignorant and unwilling to study hard. Henceforth the component – blaming the victim, appropriately position the deficit theory flourishing into this study to serve as a theoretical lens in order to explore and explicate student dropout occurrence in higher education terrain, particularly its root causes and support interventions offered to students to enhance their academic performance level.
Temporal changes
Temporal changes refer to educational interventions for socio-economically deprived students (Valencia, 2012, p. 8) who are considered to have certain characteristics that sow the academic improvement. Such interventions discriminate and segregate students based on their ethnic group and race. Giving an example of a temporal change, Valencia (2012) shared that the economically disadvantaged Mexican students were segregated because they were considered to have linguistic problems and would, as a result, negatively affect the learning progression of students from white communities.
Oppression as a form of deficit theory
Oppression has been a sensitive topic of increasing concern all over the globe. For decades there had been many attempts (in a form of government policies and campaign programmes) (Kuper, 1954, p. 19) to suggest how states can inhibit different forms of oppression of certain group of people by others based generally on their origins of births, skin colours and ethnic groups (Valencia, 2012). Theoretically, oppression has its roots in the work of great proponents of deficit school of thought, with Karl Mark serving as an epitome. Opposing the need to ensure people’s rights and democratic government for certain ethnic group, Marx (1875) developed a deficit model that was based on the idea of corrupted bourgeois which posits that bourgeois must be commended (and are capable) to govern themselves. Within the territory of South Africa and across the world in particular, oppression was popularised and came to be widely known as an ‘apartheid system of government’ that was branded mostly by racial segregation and discrimination. Some forms of racial segregation, within the government of minority (apartheid), were even legalised. For instance, the Reservation of Separate Amenities, Act no. 49 of 1953 was enacted to oppress people from back community by imposing physical separation between them and whites. Within the scope of education, it was considered inappropriate for a black child to be mingled in the same class with whites and to receive the same quality of education, let alone the school. Bantu Education served the interests of white hegemony and parted schools for each South Africa’s ethnic groups (namely, blacks, whites, coloured and Indians) forbidding black students from accessing quality of education as well as educational resources (African online digital library, African studies centre, Michigan state
University, Matrix and National endowment for the humanities, n.d). In this study, aimed at developing student support model for lower-postgraduate students who are pursuing their educational careers in open and distance institutions, the researcher argues that although students’ deficiencies lead to poor performance, failure and student dropout, there are other varied complex factors that contribute to the current escalating dropout rate. This study recognises that several studies were undertaken to advance understandings of student dropout phenomenon, but many of authors (for example, Ramsay, Jones and Barker, 2007; Wingate, 2007; Scott, Yeld, and Hendry, 2007) put more attention on the first-year level of education and less so on the postgraduate level. Distinctive to the well-documented literature, the development of student support model to address student dropout concern for students who are at postgraduate level is the universe that this study wants to fill.
Pseudoscience
Deficit school of thought is a form of Pseudoscience which Blum (1978, p. 12) defines as a practice of fabricated inducement by means of scientific pretence - what Valencia (2010, p. 18) calls “methodologically flawed ways” and it is based on class and racial prejudice. Valencia (2012) asserts that pseudoscience form of deficit theory successfully induces policymakers and many theorists because it is falsely believed that it follows correct scientific methods. Pseudoscientists are biased towards economically disadvantaged students of colour.
Educability
Educability form of deficit thinking posits that black students who are coming from poor families find learning difficult because they have personal dispositions that limit their capability to learn. Instructors and several policy developers blame students for their failure and attribute academic achievements of the institution to themselves (Valencia, 2012, p. 8).