Welcome back to course 8, Developing Relationships. In week 6, we're going to look at the issue of recognizing diversity. What I would like to do in this first lecture is look at those important terms, equity, equality, inclusion, and diversity both of which are linked but they will mean something different. The most usual discussion that's had in education these days is about equality and diversity and what that means. Equality is essentially equal rights. We treat everybody equally. It doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't matter what your cultural background is, it doesn't matter what your socioeconomic background is, we treat them equally. Of course, there may be an argument that that's not necessarily what we should be doing. The other half of this particular equation is diversity and diversity simply means different. It's indifferent to what we normally do or what we normally expect. So for instance, I come from Australia, the normal population in Australia would be Australian children. A diverse population and that's in fact what we have, would be children from all over the world in the same classroom as the Australian children, so that would make my classroom a diverse classroom. The second component that we need to look at is the difference between equity and equality. But some people will use these terms as if they're interchangeable, but really they're not, because equity is about fairness, equality is about amount. If we're looking to have a classroom that focuses itself on equity, we will be looking at treating people differently based on the circumstances that they come to the classroom with. If we're looking at having a classroom with equality, we treat everybody equally, regardless of their circumstances. Now what does this mean? Well, we could argue that equality leads to a certain outcome and equity leads to a different outcome. What we have here are two little boys and what we see is that the little boy on the left when they start school is somewhere behind the little boy on the right. Over time because of the resources that we put into the school, because of the teaching that they get, because of the equipment that they're able to use and so on, those are those little boys go up the ladder. Then they're higher on the staircase of learning than they were when they started. But what we can see is that the difference between the two is still the same. So the little boy on the left is just as far behind the boy on the right as he was when he started school. We distributed the resources equally but what we have is that we haven't made any difference in terms of the order in which these two young people are likely to learn. On the other hand, if we look at equity, we can see that over time, the boy on the left-hand side gets closer and closer to the boy on the right hand side. In some cases, may even be the same, may even be on the same step of the ladder. But in order to do that, we may have to give more resources to children on the left than we do to children on the right. We may have to spend more of their time, more of their efforts in bringing these people further up the ladder. Now, of course, this is a difficult question because some people in our communities would argue that if we have a certain amount of resources for education, that these resources should be spent equally on everybody and that's the situation at the top of the slide that you see. Other people would argue that we need to spend resources differently, more on certain people than others, so that by the end we end up with somebody that has an equal outcome. So if you look at these two things, we can talk about two different forms of equality if you like. The one at the top is equal opportunity. We give the same amount of resources and opportunities to everybody equally. But the second one is equal outcomes. We know that when people start school, when that young five-year-old walks into school on the first day, that some people are able to do more than others because of the background, because of the resources that they've had, but we want everybody to be successful. The real question that you can ask and you might want to do this on the discussion forum is which of these do you agree with? Should resources be spread equally or should we give more resources to some people than others so that by the end of school, we get as many people as possible pass the line? This is not something that is easy to answer. What does diversity mean? To have a positive view of diversity means that we value the differences that people bring. We value the ways in which those differences can make a difference to our classrooms. We would argue that diversity makes our classrooms richer. We have more opinions than we could get if we just have the same group of people. It would make our classrooms more creative because we have different people that will bring different traditions, different food, different ways of looking at the world and what this would lead to is a much more productive working environment. If we put quality and diversity together, we look at a term that is now called equal opportunities. And what we tried to establish here is the legal framework for ensuring that everybody has the opportunity to get on in life without there being discrimination. If we talk about discrimination for a few minutes, we can suggest that actually discrimination comes about because we're prejudiced against some people. We have a prejudice against people because they might look different. They might speak differently. They might behave differently. They might believe in different things. If because you are different, I say that I don't like you. There is a possibility that I would discriminate against you based on that dislike. Now, if we talk about this at the social level, at a state or a city or a national level. This discrimination can be built into one of these that we do. So we would see things that are emerging from this, such as the argument for gender equality, because in the past, women were discriminated against. We could argue that there are certain cultural discriminations that occurred. In many cases, indigenous people have had to put up with certain types of discrimination, so what we can see is that discrimination can be based on gender. It can be based on a disability, religion, or anything else. What we need to think about is how do we overcome discrimination? Why do we need to do this in our classrooms? Well, essentially the United Nations has a Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it's been in existence for 25 years. One of those statements within that convention is that every child as the right to live free from discrimination. We need to treat people fairly and equally. If we start to think about how we do that, we then get to the final term that I want to look at in brief, and that term is inclusion. Inclusion happens when we create an environment in which everybody in the room is able to feel positive about themselves. Where everybody feels valued, where everybody has the opportunity to achieve as much as they possibly can. So it's where we honor diversity, where we recognize that people bring more to us from different perspectives than we can give to them. One of the big arguments that has been used over the past 20 or 25 years is whether or not we should include children with disabilities in the classroom, or whether we should have special schools where they are treated differently. The basic underlying argument would be that if we had children that learn together, they also learn to live together. So if a child with a disability is in the regular classroom, the other children are learning about disability in a way that they wouldn't, if that child wasn't there. So if we're thinking of inclusion, we might be thinking of inclusion based on a socio economic terms. We might think of inclusion based on disability. We might think of inclusion based on cultural backgrounds or language. So what does the inclusive school mean? The inclusive school suggests that everybody within the school and the school policies and all of the people that are associated with that school recognize the possibility that having a diverse classroom and a diverse school actually increases learning opportunities and participation for everybody. So having got inclusive policies, the school also practices inclusiveness and so the things that teachers do, the things that principals do, the things that parents do, and the things that students do with each other, reflect the ethos of inclusivity, of respecting each other, of relationships with each other that are positive and supportive. In our next session, Dr. Fawaz is going to look at the various types of diversity that we're likely to face within any particular school anywhere in the world, so he will talk to you soon. Thank you.
