The persistence of deficit orientations towards student writing across time and geolinguistic spaces: reconfiguring the ‘gap’

This article critically examines the persistence of deficit orientations towards student writing across time and geolinguistic contexts. Drawing on the Academic Literacies theoretical framework, we interrogate how the documented ‘gap’ or distance between student-writers and dominant academic conventions continues to be constructed as deficit, despite decades of critique. We revisit two longitudinal studies conducted at parallel historical moments of widening participation: in the United Kingdom and in Chile. Through comparative analysis of interviews and texts, we identify three dimensions of distance that students articulate: social (class, race, gender and family background versus an imagined ‘traditional’ student), linguistic (lexical and stylistic repertoires positioned as insufficient), and epistemic (exclusion of vernacular or subjective resources from knowledge-making). Drawing on findings illustrating student perspectives and evidence from the literature on teacher experiences, we discuss possible reasons for the persistence of deficit orientations and propose a heuristic that reconceptualises the gap as a dialogic space of ‘becoming’. This perspective foregrounds students’ linguistic and semiotic repertoires as resources, and calls for pedagogies and policies that move beyond remediation to embrace plural subjectivities and epistemic justice in higher education. The discussion is timely given the ongoing global commitment to expansion and diversification in higher education.