The diversity of the student population is increasing, with greater proportions of disabled students, mature students and international students entering higher education (HE) each year. This increased diversity, allied with the duties* placed on institutions to fulfill student entitlement, call for the adaptation of our teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment methods in order to ensure that all students are able to experience success in HE and achieve their full potential.

#diversity as a competitive advantage @lizbrenner #sapphirenow

"Racial disparity is 38% worse in the #advertising industry than the overall U.S. labor market." #diversity #inclusion

RT @fdncenter: Foundations Working to Increase #Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in #Philanthropy, Report Finds http://t.co/dgBUSi8X

The International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS) is an interim international nongovernmental, nonprofit organization embracing such values as self-management, egalitarianism, solidarity, diversity, ecological husbandry and internationalism. Founded in January 2012, the organization had 1650 members[1] in 76 countries as of May 2012.

The idea is not to confront students with LGBT issues but to seep LGBT people into their consciousness through inclusive lesson plans along with simply giving young people the facts.

The reason students laugh and giggle and use words in a derogatory manner is because they don't know what they mean. After they know the facts, they use the words in the correct way. We have lots of conversations about, "Is it legal to be a lesbian?" Some kids don't actually know if it's legal or not, so it is up to us as educators to inform them. Also many times I hear "Is it legal to get married?", "Can gays adopt children?", "How do lesbians have children?"

The importance of LGBT History month and building awareness are vital to creating a cohesive community. If there's nothing in the curriculum that represents LGBT people then what role models are there for those young LGBT people in our school? Our curriculum must reflect our community – the same goes for all the equality strands.

How should you prepare for the first day of class? How can you encourage all students to participate in discussions? How do you ensure disabled students can take part in field work? Increasingly, universities are drawing from a less traditional group of students international students, disabled students, part time students, and mature students. This book offers specific, practical advice on the issues that teachers encounter when teaching in a diverse classroom. Inclusion and Diversity highlights good practice for all students, and provides a helpful structure around the day-to-day experiences of staff and students as they make contact with each other. With reference to the international literature, and discussing some of the educational principles that underpin an inclusive curriculum, this book covers a wide range of useful topics so that teachers will have quick access to guidelines on different aspects of teaching and learning: small and large group teaching; e-learning; work placements; students lives out of the classroom; personal tutoring; skills agenda; assessment; employability and further study; Addressing a range of themes, including student age, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and gender, this book aids all practitioners in higher education today particularly those new lecturers meeting their students for the first time to develop a better understanding of the issues involved in teaching a diverse range of students.

The British Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA, September 2002) will have a major impact on Higher Education and Further Education provisions. This essential book addresses the learning needs of impaired and disabled students. It suggests effective responses for those designing and delivering the curriculum, discusses flexible teaching strategies and distinctive modes of learning, and gives expert insights into how individuals may learn in special ways. Leading contributors cover the whole student experience, from academic learning to social dimensions. The book is not exclusively concerned with the SENDA; it shows how to look beyond any particular impairment to the potential of the student to learn to think with clarity and critical awareness within their chosen discipline. Key contents: * from exclusion to inclusion: the context; * visual, auditory and physical impairments; * specific learning issues (including dyslexia, autism and Asperger's syndrome); * mental health issues; * issues for pedagogy and practical guidance.

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.

Darwin published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favored competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

"Diversity is the crucial element for group creativity. Innovation teams tasked with creating new products or technologies or iterating existing ones need tension to produce breakthroughs, and tension comes from diverse points of view. ... How to get started? Take a stubborn challenge you're currently facing and set up an informal meeting with a harsh critic, someone who often disagrees with your point of view. Critics challenge assumptions and are usually very passionate. Invite them in; hear them out. You may be surprised by how much you learn, and also by how thinking about a problem from a different perspective can refresh and energize your own ideas."
Author: Beth Comstock, HBR, May 11, 2012

Q: Was there something about fin de siécle Vienna that nurtured ferment across intellectual and cultural life?
A: It was a synthesis of many strands, and the reason the ferment occurred is because Emperor Franz Joseph lifted travel restrictions throughout the empire and many of the young and gifted came to Vienna. That explosion in the arts, science, music, economics and philosophy occurred as a result of this influx of talent. The view of the human mind that we now hold in 2012 derives from Vienna 1900, [we're not rational creatures that the enlightenment thought].
Q: How can the lens of neuroscience help us understand something as ineffable as art?
A: Alois Riegl, a great art historian in Vienna in 1900, drew attention to the important problem of “the beholder’s share”—how the viewer responds to a work of art. The artist tries to give you the illusion that you’re seeing the real world in three dimensions in natural color when he’s actually working all the time on two dimensions and with artificial color. To figure out how the brain creates this illusion is a fantastically interesting problem. Two of his students, [art historians] Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich, pointed out that what the brain does is recreate the work of art. When you look at a work of art, you’re undergoing the creative challenge that the artist undergoes in making the picture. It’s of a lesser magnitude, but the information coming in through the eyes is incomplete, and you have to fill it in with built-in rules of what is possible in the world combined with previous experiences that allow you to situate this correctly. This requires an immense degree of creativity. They realized the brain is a creativity machine. Subsequent neuroscience has absolutely confirmed that.

You’re in Queens now, pal, borough of immigrants. And this park, site of both the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs but faded since those heady days, is now their backyard. Sprawling south from CitiField, it lies within walking distance for the Chinese of Flushing, the Mexicans and Ecuadoreans of Corona, the Colombians of Jackson Heights.

Things happen here in their own informal way, and this is what makes an overlooked park one of New York City’s glorious public spaces.