CITRAL SUMMARY: Reframing Educational Outcomes: Moving beyond Achievement Gaps; Shukla et al.

Research-Based Strategies for Teaching

Title	Reframing Educational Outcomes: Moving beyond Achievement Gaps
Author(s)	Sarita Y. Shukla, Elli J. Theobald, Joel K. Abraham, and Rebecca M. Price
Citation	Shukla, Theobald, E. J., Abraham, J. K., & Price, R. M. (2022). Reframing Educational Outcomes: Moving beyond Achievement Gaps. CBE Life Sciences Education, 21(2), es2–es2. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0130

Summary

The Takeaway: The authors review previous literature surrounding “the achievement gap” and argue that this term/concept has racialized underpinnings rooted in deficit thinking. They encourage researchers in educational biology to reduce their use of this term while adopting practices that stem from asset-based frameworks including opportunity gaps, educational debt, community cultural wealth, and ethics of care.

Why is this important?

Educational inequality along racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines have been a concern in understanding differences in educational outcomes. However, too often these differences in educational outcomes are attributed to deficits of particular individuals and groups. The authors note that the term “achievement gap” typically stems from theoretical frameworks that center a structural bias of which groups set the standard for educational success. The authors propose to drop the term altogether in favor of language and frameworks that align better to researchers’ goals and to avoid the limitations that can arise through its use.

“Achievement gap” as deficit thinking

The term “achievement gap” is used in research that examines differences in achievement (e.g., differences in test scores) across students from different demographic groups. Some researchers who study achievement gaps provide deficit-based explanations to fault students from marginalized groups for lower educational attainment.
Deficit thinking describes a mindset or research framework in which differences in outcomes between members of different groups - generally a politically and economically dominant group and an oppressed group - are attributed to a quality that is lacking in the biology, culture, or mindset of the oppressed group (Valencia, 1997).
Some studies replace “achievement gap” with “score gap” (e.g., Jencks and Phillips, 2006) to define the type of achievement under consideration; others use “opportunity gap,” to emphasize differences in opportunities students have had throughout their educational history (e.g., Carter and Welner, 2013; more on opportunity gaps later). In biology education research, many papers still use the language of “achievement gap,” even in instances when researchers use other non-deficit frameworks.
While some may argue that this language merely describes a pattern, its origin and history is explicitly and inextricably linked to deficit-thinking models. Studies show that messages of perpetual underachievement can inadvertently reinforce negative stereotypes. For instance, Quinn (2020) demonstrated that, when participants watched a 2-minute video of a newscast using the term “achievement gap,” they disproportionately underpredicted the graduation rate of Black students relative to White students, even more so than participants in a control group who watched a counter-stereotypical video. Quinn concludes that the video discussing the achievement gap likely heightened the bias of the participants (Quinn, 2020).

Systems level & asset-based frameworks

Framework name	Framework type	Framework description
Opportunity gap	Focused on inequalities at the systemic level	This framework shifts the onus of differential student performance from individual deficiencies to actions that address systemic racism. Its primary emphasis is on opportunities that students have or have not had, rather than on their current performance (i.e., achievement) in a class (Milner, 2012). Example: Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are one way to prevent opportunity gaps. The authors interpret the suggestions that Bangera and Brownell (2014) make about building CUREs as a way to recognize that some students have the opportunity to participate in undergraduate research experiences while others do not. For example, students who access extracurricular research opportunities are typically comfortable talking to faculty or have the financial resources to pursue unpaid laboratory positions (Bangera and Brownell, 2014). CUREs institutionalize the opportunity to conduct research, so that every student benefits from conducting research while pursuing an undergraduate degree.
Educational debt	Focused on inequalities at the systemic level	Introduced by Ladson-Billings (2006) who submits that American society has an educational debt, rather than an educational deficit. This framework shifts the work of finding solutions to educational inequities away from individuals and onto systems. Example: One program that aims to repay educational debt is the NSF’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (National Science Foundation, 2020). This grant program supports HBCUs to have far-reaching consequences (e.g., opportunities to begin research projects and to fund specific, short-term goals to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and broadening participation research centers. Financial resources aimed specifically at historically Black colleges and universities, and other minority-serving institutions acknowledge and address the stresses that marginalized students experience at primarily White campuses.
Community cultural wealth	Focused on social or cultural assets that stem from individuals or their communities	Introduced by Yosso (2005) and rooted in Critical Race Theory. Asserts that students’ social and cultural backgrounds give them a range of assets that must be appreciated in education as opposed to liabilities that hinder their success. Example: Thompson and Jensen-Ryan (2018) offer advice to mentors about how to use cultural wealth to mentor undergraduate students in research. They identify the forms of scientific cultural capital that research mentors typically value, finding that these aspects of a scientific identity are closely associated with majority culture. They challenge mentors to broaden the forms of recognizable capital. For example, members of the faculty can recruit students into their labs from programs that promote the diversity of scientists, rather than insisting that students approach them with their interest to work in the lab (Thompson and Jensen-Ryan, 2018). They can recognize that undergraduate students may not express an interest in a research career initially but that research experience is still formative. They can recognize that students who are strong mentors to their peers are valuable members of a research team.
Ethics of care	Focused on social or cultural assets that stem from individuals or their communities	This framework complements community cultural wealth as both are asset-based. A key difference is that community cultural wealth focuses on the assets that students bring, and ethics of care focuses on the assets that an instructor brings. The premises of teaching through the ethics of care are that everyone—including students and instructors—has both an innate desire to learn and the capacity to nurture (Pang et al., 2000). Example: Gutiérrez (2000) presents an example of an entire department applying ethics of care to support how African-American students learn math. This study is an ethnography of a particularly successful STEM magnet program in a public high school with a population that is majority African American. In her analysis of the math department, Gutiérrez avoids the phrase “achievement gap,” while also recognizing that people outside the school assume a deficit model when considering the students. Instead, she illustrates how researchers can use an asset-based lens to build from knowledge about differences in performance (Gutiérrez, 2000). The institution has values that empower teachers to support students, commitment from teachers to find innovative practices, and a supportive chairperson.

Moving forward

The authors suggest that researchers choose words that reflect their personal worldviews and research frameworks and recognize that terms often fall out of use. In some instances, the terms themselves no longer suffice, so a simple “search and replace” may address the issue. However, other terminology like the “achievement gap,” is tied to specific frameworks that affect how research is designed, how results are interpreted, and what conclusions are drawn. Simply replacing “achievement gap” would not address the deficit-based research frameworks.
The authors also suggest disaggregating data to look at differences between and within groups as well as analyzing data with a framework that dismantles racial hierarchies.
Lastly, the authors suggest that biology education research consider how definitions of success may center White, middle-class ways of knowing and performing. In a recent essay, Weatherton and Schussler (2021) reported that, in articles published in LSE between the years 2015 and 2020, the word “success,” when defined, largely meant high GPAs and exam scores. This narrow definition of success prioritizes scientific content, whereas there are additional admirable goals by which success could be measured such as a diversity of scientific approaches (Howard and Kern, 2019).

CITRAL Reflections

What framework(s) do you think are reflected in your course(s)? Your discipline?

How does language that you or others use reflect ideas associated with one or more of these frameworks?