ABSTRACT
This chapter covers three sections. First, it discusses the notion of school failure and the variable of the achievement gap (TAG). Second, four theoretical perspectives to explain school failure are explicated. They are: (a) cultural-ecological; (b) communication process; (c) systemic inequality; (d) deficit thinking. Third, seven characteristics of deficit thinking are discussed, to wit: (a) blaming the victim; (b) Othering and binarization; (c) oppression; (d) pseudoscience; (e) temporal changes; (f) educability; (g) heterodoxy.
