Ch. 4- # 2: Recognizing Deficiency and Difference Orientation in your own teaching.

According to Noel (2008), deficiency orientation is when a student is lacking something and the teacher feels the student should have it in order to succeed properly. From my experience as a math teacher, a couple of my accelerated math students take a lot of time to finish a task. I always assumed that this delay is because of their lack of interest in math, and also the lack of content knowledge. Later, I came to know that the two students are interested in math but their pace of learning and working is low compared to other accelerated students. Also, I have another Hispanic student who is not succeeding in my math class and I assumed that he is not succeeding because he doesn’t like school at all. Later, I realized that he is not succeeding in math because he has so many family problems. As Noel (2008) stated, deficiency orientation is very dangerous because teachers end up blaming the students’ failure in school on wrong assumptions rather than knowing the students’ learning needs and personal issues.

According to Noel (2008), difference orientation means the teacher sees the students’ characteristics as different, not deficient. After a few weeks of teaching experience, I started to see my students’ characteristics as different, not deficient. I have a student who is in my regular math class, and he is a special needs student. He just moved in from a different state. It is very hard to keep him on task, and I tried many different ways. However, none of my techniques worked. Then, I realized that he can be kept on task by giving him rewards. He is good at math, but he finishes his task only if he gets a reward.

In my perspective, every child is different in their learning style. As a teacher, we should use the difference orientation rather than deficiency orientation.