Mångfald, olikhet och likvärdighet

Abstract

Diversity, difference, and equity. How educators perceive and approach student diversity. The main aim of the study is to analyse the construction of student diversity through Swedish educators’ discursive practices, and how these constructions affect realization of the equity goal. The empirical material has been collected through semi-structured interviews with 30 Swedish educators employed at 25 schools. The theoretical as well as the epistemological point of departure is inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s constructivist sociology and in particular the notion of misrecognition, understood as a failure to recognize the arbitrary nature of social divisions. The analyses have generated two main constructions of student diversity, tentatively conceptualized as universal and partial diversity. Both emanate from the same discursive practice that misrecognizes the arbitrariness of their constitutive social categories. Hence, we argue that diversity as an idea, a principle and a concept, is meaningful only if it is based on recognition of a student’s subject, disburdened of prejudices and expectations imbued in all social categories.

Keywords

• student diversity
• educators
• equity
• misrecognition
• discursive practices