When faced with this data and information about educational inequities and achievement gaps, how do we respond? This is, perhaps, the most important question for educators and institutions to ask.

While deficit-minded individuals construe unequal outcomes as originating from students’ characteristics, equity minded individuals will reflect on institution-based dysfunctions and consider their own roles and responsibilities as well as those of their colleagues in the production of equitable educational outcomes.

-Estela Mara Bensimon, Center for Urban Education

A Problem of Perspective

Wood, Harris III, and White (2015) explain that the vast majority of educators have been trained to view poor student performance as a function of the student rather than the institution - a perspective that "emanates from foundational student success theories and models which position the student (and their attributes) as the locus of causality for student success" (p. 11).

Bensimon (2005) also notes that the higher education research community has tended to study minority students primarily through the lens of student development theories. She argues that the "urgent and intractable" problem of inequality in educational outcomes for historically underserved groups needs to be addressed instead from the perspective of organizational learning theory (p. 99). In other words, we should view educational inequities as "a learning problem of institutional actors - faculty members, administrators, counselors, and others - rather than as a learning problem of students" (Bensimon, 2005, p. 100).

Cognitive Frames

More specifically, Bensimon (2006) has described the response to educational inequalities in terms of mental models, or "cognitive frames" (pp. 4-5). These cognitive frames typically function below our consciousness. They are the "interpretive lenses" that we acquire through education, experience, and socialization and that help us with sensemaking. These frames are important because they shape how we define a problem, and our preferred solutions. Let's look at Bensimon's (2006) characterizations of "deficit" vs. "equity" cognitive frames (pp. 5, 18):

Deficit Cognitive Frame

Students are blamed for inadequate outcomes
Practioners see their work as efforts to remediate or "fix" students
Inequality is attributed to cultural stereotypes, cultural deficits, inadequate socialization, or lack of student motivation and self-initiative
Inequality is rationalized and attributed to external causes beyond our control

Equity Cognitive Frame

Key focus is institutional responsibility
Unequal outcomes are attributed to institutional structures and practices that have a cumulative effect of placing underrepresented groups at a disadvantage
Inequality is viewed as unnatural and as a problem of institutional accountability
Inequality is viewed as a product of unconscious racism in practices and beliefs
Inequality is viewed as solvable by practitioners

Textbox: Bensimon, E. M. (2006). Learning equity-mindedness: Equality in educational outcomes. New England Resource Center for Higher Education, 17(1), pp. 2-5, 18-21.

Wood, J. L., Harris III, F., & White, K. (2015). Teaching men of color in the community college: A guidebook. San Diego, CA: Montezuma Publishing.

Bensimon, E. M. (2005). Closing the achievement gap in higher education: An organizational learning perspective. New Directions for Higher Education, 131, 99-111. doi:10.1002/he.190

Image: "Your perspective is your reality…" by Nathan Dumlao is in the Public Domain, CC0