Approaches to Educational Equity: How Framings, Narratives, and Rhetoric Shape the Problem and Its Solutions

Abstract

As the United States continues to grapple with educational inequity, who gets to define what inequity is and how we address it? This dissertation examines how the values and perspectives of dominant cultures produce narrow approaches to educational equity, which situate the problem in individual beliefs and behaviors rather than underlying structures of power that sustain them. Through a series of controlled online experiments, open-ended responses, and a systematic literature review, my collaborators and I investigate how these narrow approaches shape how we perceive educational inequity and the solutions that psychology proposes to address them. Paper 1 finds that although strength-based educational interventions in psychology are rooted in perspectives that acknowledge the impacts of structural barriers, nearly half of existing interventions target change at the individual-level, thereby reproducing the same narrow framings they aim to replace. Paper 2 demonstrates that strength-based narratives drawn directly from Latine students’ own experiences can counter deficit-based perceptions about their group. Moreover, strength-based narratives increase academic course confidence for Latines and shift White educators’ perceptions and academic expectations of Latine students. Paper 3 finds that White Americans high in egalitarian values accept opposition to affirmative action policies when the rhetoric used weaponizes concerns for students of color compared to traditional opposition rhetoric that expresses concerns for White Americans. When compared to traditional rhetoric, the weaponization of diversity rhetoric allows White egalitarians to maintain racial inequities while appearing non-prejudiced, revealing how diversity language can be co-opted to sustain the systems it aims to challenge. Together, this dissertation expands approaches to educational equity to be more structural and critical, calling for responses from the field to reflect these more nuanced understandings.