Introduction
In the past educational materials and educational settings assumed (often unconsciously) that a “learner” could be defined in a narrow, one-dimensional way. In reality learners have always come from wide range of backgrounds and cultures but they may have found that educational materials and settings assumed a narrow “profile” and that they had to make their own individual additional efforts to access materials and settings. The impact of this situation was inequality.
With increased recognition of this inequality and legislation to combat it, there are now more specific responsibilities to be met by educators and educational settings in order to ensure that learners are not assumed to be one-dimensional. Specifically, educators and educational settings need to demonstrate recognition that their learner population is diverse in terms of gender, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and religion/faith/belief. This recognition needs to be demonstrated through:
- adjustments to the physical environment and learning technologies available
- the content of the educational materials themselves
- the attitudes and values of educators towards learners
Author and Copyright
© 2009 Scottish Social Services Council. This material was written for the SSSC by Marianne Hughes. This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 UK : Scotland License. This means you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work; and to make derivative works on condition that you credit SSSC and do not use the work for commercial purposes. For full details of the licence please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/scotland/