What is Diversity?
As a blunt term, the University of Idaho (n.d.) defines diversity as being “[any] individual differences such as age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and physical ability or disability” (p. 12). However, I believe that diversity can be viewed, and defined, by using a much broader frame of thinking. Diversity is a concept that allows room for all languages, cultures, and thought processes to have a chance to learn, exist, grow, and change. In the educational realm, diversity is a requirement in the present-day. This is because students and their families are immigrating from all over the world. This can help the reputation and skill of teachers, students, and their institutions, as students with outside perspectives can inform instructors and peers when a certain aspect of speech or lesson planning is offensive or neglectful. This feedback requires instructors to develop and improve their lesson planning skills to a degree that they can anticipate any other feedback that they may get from students who come from diverse cultural backgrounds (Diversity and Inclusive Teaching (Archived), n.d.).
Nemeth (n.d.) writes that “Children under the age of six who come from immigrant families form the fastest growing segment of our population, [and] census estimates show that about 25% of preschool-aged children come from homes where a language other than English is spoken” (p. 225). This means that the classroom setting will be changing in the future. Diversity, when viewed as the overlying concept, welcomes this change openly. This is because diversity creates the room for the various languages and cultures that will be introduced to help positively influence the lessons that are taught and activities that are done. By doing this, the adjustment period that students and teachers will inevitably have will go from being disheartening and awkward to exciting and informative.
References
Diversity and Inclusive Teaching (Archived). (n.d.).
Nemeth, K. (n.d.). Language and Cultural Diversity in the Classroom. Language-and-Cultural-Diversity.pdf [PDF]
University of Idaho. (n.d.) Multicultural Perspectives and Diversity Issues. Chapter_4.pdf [PDF]