Celebrating Difference and the Other:  Students achieving their Potential
Channel: Richard Self
Date: 2019-04-12

One of our strategic objectives is to engage with our students in the definition of their assessment processes in order to suite their individuality and strengths. We are also encouraged to internationalise our curriculum in a time of globalisation and nationalism.
This is clearly designed to address the fact that we are unique individuals with unique experiences and history. This requires an understanding of individuality and differences and the elimination of the bias of stereotypes (sameness).
Understanding our students’ individuality can be used to guide and coach them to achieve the limits of their potential and to use their own unique, experiential insights and challenges to focus their studies for good.
Too often we are too scared to explore their uniqueness with our students from fear of accusations of discrimination.
This short presentation and discussion will explore how this connects with the dialogs of diversity in the context of some resistance to allow such recognition which may possibly be based on the assumption of stereotypes in the perceiver’s eyes. Ultimately this is an interesting but very important balance between “Same” and “Different”.