Harvard education scholar speaks on asset-based practices at KPU speaker series

Harvard education scholar Liya Escalera presented “Asset-Based Approaches to Student Success” at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Surrey campus on March 6, covering asset-based practices in higher education.

Part of the Provost Presents speaker series led by now KPU Acting President Diane Purvey, the series invites KPU staff, students, and the public to hear from those in higher education.

Escalera, who is higher education concentration lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, focuses her work on asset-based practices that contribute to student success and help institutions move away from deficit-based frameworks.

She spoke about how institutions can shift their mindset about students and equity and how they can better serve their student body.

“Asset-based practices are the groundwater for equity,” Escalera said. “We have to look underneath. What’s happening underneath is usually a set of deficit-based assumptions that really need to shift into asset-based practice.”

Deficit-based frameworks focus on the student as the problem, whereas asset-based frameworks build on a student’s experiences and strengths.

Escalera uses the example of a student seeking help from an academic advisor with math in her presentation to further explain the difference between asset-based and deficit-based approaches.

“A deficit-based approach is going to be ‘Oh no, do you need a tutor? Do you need more time to think that you’re in the wrong class?’ It’s going to look at that problem and go down a rabbit hole of understanding the problem,” Escalera said.​

While asset and deficit-based approaches were the main focus of the talk, Escalera also spoke about her research on KPU and how it compares to other institutions she has studied.

She spoke about the distinct similarities between students from KPU, Boston’s Bunker Hill Community College, and the University of Massachusetts Boston, noting that community-driven students who face similar equity challenges were a common thread across the institutions.

“Underrepresented, low income, and first-generation college students — there is just so much research that demonstrates that how they experience our campuses is that they’re disproportionately underestimated in their academic abilities,” Escalera said.​

Escalera added that students from the same underrepresented ethnic and racial groups experience microaggressions and biases as part of their regular campus engagement.

She said that deficit-based messages to learning are damaging to underrepresented and marginalized students because educators or advisors lack the skills or motivation. This can, over time, cause disengagement with their students.

Exposing students to deficit-based messages, leads to low retention rates, burnouts, and a feeling that “college is not for you,” Escalera said.

Escalera said educators and advisors can shift from deficit-based approaches to an asset-based lens, which will lead to greater engagement with students.

“This is not about [how] we’re going to make students feel good…. This is about real deep engagement with some of the real challenges in our work.”

The talk concluded with Escalera discussing how future practices can be changed to align services with students’ real lives.

“If you go down the deficit-based discourse … what’s wrong with them is a dead end. It doesn’t help you figure anything out. It doesn’t help you fix anything,” Escalera said.

For more information about the Provost Presents speaker series, visit www.kpu.ca/provost-presents.