Personal deficiency, racism, or culture clash?: Teacher candidates' beliefs about why racial discipline disparities exist

In this exploratory qualitative study, we mapped out the ideological frames a sample of teacher education students from a large SE university in the US adopt to make sense of why racial discipline disproportionality persists. We examined both the prevalence of deficit and structural ideologies, and tried to uncover ideological positions and justifications that fall in-between these ideologies. Findings show that participants' responses fell all over the ideological continuum, as some attributed educational disparities to supposed deficiencies in students' cultures or communities, others to a lack of teachers' understandings of their students’ cultures or to individual biases, and yet others to structural and institutional racism. We propose the following implications for teacher education programs: teacher educators should push teacher candidates to identify and address their implicit biases and to understand their relationship to societal injustice; teacher educators should equip teacher candidates with skills that help them see students and their families from an asset-based lens, not a deficit lens; and finally, teacher educators should teach teacher candidates explicitly about equitable and culturally responsive pedagogy. •The researchers analyzed the ideological frames US teacher candidates adopt to make sense of discipline disproportionalities.•The researchers examined the prevalence of structural ideologies, and uncovered positions that fall between these ideologies.•The participants placed all over the ideological continuum, attributing educational disparities to a series of factors.•Teacher education programs should explicitly teach teacher candidates about culturally responsive strategies.