Educational Diversity—The Subject of Difference and Different Subjects

"Diversity" has become a key term in contemporary social theory, politics and practice and is often used as both a description of complex social realities and a prescription for how those realities should be valued, assessed and managed. As "diversity" is increasingly invoked in changing educational landscapes it is pulled in different directions: as capital, cure, caveat and check. In considering diversity in education this collection explores the relationship between new equality regimes and continued societal inequalities, exploring change, ambivalence and resistance as negotiated and differently inhabited in and through policies, institutional practices and everyday encounters. Uniquely, it brings together a focus on (post)compulsory education, seeking to more fully situate educational journeys and experiences of staff, students and pupils. Current considerations of diversity are placed within different changing educational contexts from the UK, Ireland, Australia and Taiwan. These perspectives aim to situate discussion of diversity across time and place - including discussion of who is diverse, the feeling of diversity, legislating for diversity, and enabling diverse pedagogies.

YVETTE TAYLOR is Professor in Social and Policy Studies and Head of the Weeks Centre, London South Bank University, UK. Books include Working-Class Lesbian Life: Classed Outsiders, Lesbian and Gay Parenting, and Fitting Into Place? Class and Gender Geographies and Temporalities. Edited collections include Classed Intersections; Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality and Sexualities: Reflections and Futures. She has held a Fulbright Scholarship at Rutgers University.