Deficit narratives as teacher foils: how vulnerability and emotional regimes shape teacher discourse

Abstract Teachers’ collegial conversations can be important sites for teachers’ learning, but sometimes result in deficit narratives about students and families. Research seldom “gets inside” teachers’ collegial conversations to shed light on when and why deficit narratives arise. In this study, we investigate how deficit narratives are co-constructed, and what function they serve in teachers’ discourse. Specifically, we look at the relationship between teachers’ assignation of responsibility in relation to teacher vulnerability. Critical discourse analysis makes visible how teacher vulnerability and emotions precipitated deficit narratives. Across cases, we found that teachers offered deficit narratives in response to teacher vulnerability under emotional regimes that disallowed strong negative emotions. These deficit narratives served to shift the threat and return teachers’ emotions to acceptable levels under these emotional regimes. These findings have implications for design of teachers’ learning environments; in addition to addressing deficit ideas themselves, findings suggest the importance of attending to how emotional regimes structure teachers’ responses to vulnerability in teachers’ collegial talk.