Grounded in ethnography and teacher research, Moving across Differences examines how an LGBTQ+-themed literature course enabled high school students to negotiate their differences and engage in ethical encounters. Drawing on the work of queer theorists, Mollie V. Blackburn conceptualizes these encounters as forms of movement across differences of not only gender and sexuality but also identity and ideology more broadly. As we follow Blackburn's thoughtful rendering of students' sometimes fraught exchanges, we are encouraged to follow their lead and move when confronted with differences. We might move closer to those like us, so we can be in community to recover and heal. But we might also move closer to others, so we can discover and learn. The book argues, though, that we must move ethically and, moreover, that literature and the work of reading, writing, and talking can foster this movement. Modeling care in both teaching and research, Moving across Differences contributes to the study and practice of English Language Arts curriculum and pedagogy, qualitative methods, and queer theory. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: https://www.openmonographs.org/. It can also be found in the SUNY Open Access Repository at https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/7524

The authors use vivid stories and activities to uncover hidden biases. --

"If you believe that your organization has done everything it can to enhance its diversity, and if you are still frustrated at how little progress you have made, Moving Diversity Forward is for you. It is an instructive read for all of those who wish to live and work in a multi-cultural world where everyone has a fair chance to succeed and contribute." -- Frank P. Barron, Chief Legal Officer, Morgan Stanley

Due to continuing immigration and increasing racial and ethnic inclusiveness, higher education institutions in the United States are likely to grow ever more diverse in the 21st century. This shift holds both promise and peril: Increased inter-ethnic contact could lead to a more fruitful learning environment that encourages collaboration. On the other hand, social identity and on-campus diversity remain hotly contested issues that often raise intergroup tensions and inhibit discussion. How can we help diverse students learn from each other and gain the competencies they will need in an increasingly multicultural America? Dialogue Across Difference synthesizes three years’ worth of research from an innovative field experiment focused on improving intergroup understanding, relationships and collaboration. The result is a fascinating study of the potential of intergroup dialogue to improve relations across race and gender. First developed in the late 1980s, intergroup dialogues bring together an equal number of students from two different groups – such as people of color and white people, or women and men – to share their perspectives and learn from each other. To test the possible impact of such courses and to develop a standard of best practice, the authors of Dialogue Across Difference incorporated various theories of social psychology, higher education, communication studies and social work to design and implement a uniform curriculum in nine universities across the country. Unlike most studies on intergroup dialogue, this project employed random assignment to enroll more than 1,450 students in experimental and control groups, including in 26 dialogue courses and control groups on race and gender each. Students admitted to the dialogue courses learned about racial and gender inequalities through readings, role-play activities and personal reflections. The authors tracked students’ progress using a mixed-method approach, including longitudinal surveys, content analyses of student papers, interviews of students, and videotapes of sessions. The results are heartening: Over the course of a term, students who participated in intergroup dialogues developed more insight into how members of other groups perceive the world. They also became more thoughtful about the structural underpinnings of inequality, increased their motivation to bridge differences and intergroup empathy, and placed a greater value on diversity and collaborative action. The authors also note that the effects of such courses were evident on nearly all measures. While students did report an initial increase in negative emotions – a possible indication of the difficulty of openly addressing race and gender – that effect was no longer present a year after the course. Overall, the results are remarkably consistent and point to an optimistic conclusion: intergroup dialogue is more than mere talk. It fosters productive communication about and across differences in the service of greater collaboration for equity and justice. Ambitious and timely, Dialogue Across Difference presents a persuasive practical, theoretical and empirical account of the benefits of intergroup dialogue. The data and research presented in this volume offer a useful model for improving relations among different groups not just in the college setting but in the United States as well.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement. It is becoming less straightforward for people to move forward together. They face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people from across more divides. In such situations, the most common ways of advancing—some people telling others what to do, or everyone just doing what they think they need to—aren't adequate. One better way is through facilitating. But the most common approaches to facilitating—bossy vertical directing from above or collegial horizontal accompanying from alongside—aren't adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough. This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. It doesn't choose either the bossy vertical or the collegial horizontal approach: it cycles back and forth between them. Rather than forcing or cajoling, the facilitator removes the obstacles that stand in the way of people contributing and connecting equitably. It enables people to bring their whole selves to the process. This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress.

Theorising Learning to Teach in Higher Education provides both lecturers embarking on a career in higher education and established members of staff with the capacity to improve their teaching. The process of learning to teach, and the associated field of professional academic development for teaching, is absolutely central to higher education. Offering innovative alternatives to some of the dominant work on teaching theory, this volume explores three significant approaches in detail: critical and social realist, social practice and sociomaterial approaches, which are divided into four sections: Sociomaterialism Practice theories Critical and social realism Crossover perspectives. Readers will benefit from discussions on the role and place of theory in the process of learning to teach, whilst international case studies demonstrate the kinds of insights and recommendations that could emanate from the three approaches examined, drawing together contributions from Europe, Africa and Australasia. Both challenging and enlightening, this book argues the need for theory in order to advance scholarship in the field and achieve goals related to social justice in higher education systems across the world. It draws attention to newly emerging theoretical perspectives and relatively underused perspectives to demonstrate the need for theory in relation to learning to teach. This book will appeal to academics interested in how they come to learn to teach, to administrators and academic developers responsible for professional development strategies at universities and masters and PhD level students researching professional development in higher education.

Moving Difference demonstrates how differences between migrants who share the same nationality travel with them and can impact on every aspect of their ‘mobile lives’. Analysing the lived experiences and narratives of Brazilians in London, it adds an in-depth ethnographic understanding of the specific contours of difference to studies of migration by demonstrating how social differences, rooted in colonial legacies, are constantly being re-created and negotiated in the everyday making of the global world. By using ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews, in addition to historical and contextual analyses, the book allows us to understand how people speak of, engage with and negotiate difference in their everyday lives and how this is shaped by the macro-political and -social contexts of immigration and emigration. Giving attention to the complex interrelations between ‘here’ and ‘there’, past and present, this book allows us to go beyond the proliferated homogenised stereotypes of ‘the migrant’ and ‘the migrant community’ often reproduced by academics as well as by the media and politicians, whether with a view to pathologising or romanticising the ‘migrant other’. This title will appeal to students, scholars, community workers and general readers interested in migration, social class, gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity, colonialism and slavery, social exclusion, globalisation and urban sociology.

By addressing the major contemporary challenges to globalization, this study explains why and how the global continues to matter in our unsettled world.

Policy Analysis in the United States gathers a group of original contributions by scholars and leading practitioners of public policy analysis. Originating in the United States, the field of public policy analysis has affected nations around the world and been enhanced by contributions of scholars and practitioners in other regions, but it remains most highly developed and practiced in education and government here. This volume explores the nature of policy analysis in different sectors and at different levels of government, as well as by nongovernmental actors, such as unions, businesses, NGOs, and the media.

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: • The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients • The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping • The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.