“This Group of Difficult Kids”: The Discourse Preservice English Teachers Use to Label Students

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to understand how achievement gap Discourse might be present in preservice teachers' (PSTs) Discourse about students they found challenging to teach. Using a Discourse analytic approach, the project considers: How do PSTs describe challenging students in their written reflections? Do PSTs draw on students' multiple identities? Findings reveal PSTs are taking up a Discourse prevalent in today's educational environment in which students, particularly ethnically and linguistically diverse students, are discussed in terms of inadequacy. PSTs typically describe students in terms of a single label, rather than as having multiple identities. Implications include that PSTs might enter teaching with a limited view and incomplete understanding of students and that even a teacher-education program aimed at pushing PSTs to question their assumptions about students might be reifying a systemwide Discourse that identifies students based on labels—sometimes deficit-oriented labels—rather than fuller understandings of students.

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