Students’ Openness to Diversity and Challenge: A Critical Role for Faculty in Student Learning

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Students’ Critical Reflections on Identity and Role

Abstract

This study identifies faculty and curricular influences on students’ openness to diversity and challenge, utilizing student data from the 2013 administration of the Personal and Social Responsibility Inventory (PSRI) where participating institutions elected to include the optional Openness to Diversity and Challenge (Pascarella et al., 1996) outcome scale. We combine Terenzini and Reason’s (2005) conceptual framework for multi-institutional studies of student outcomes with ecological theories of student learning and development (Bronfenbrennor, 1993; Renn & Arnold, 2003) to examine how institutional contexts and students’ experiences with faculty and curricular influences determined their openness to diversity and being challenged to consider differing points of view.

Authors

• Andrew Joseph Ryder, University of North Carolina - Wilmington

• Robert D. Reason, Iowa State University

• Joshua J. Mitchell, Iowa State University

• Kathleen E. Gillon, Iowa State University