Lessons Learned (and Still Learning) From Research on the Educational Benefits of Student Diversity in Higher Education: Implications for K–12 Policy and Practice

• In Event: 61.037 - In Search of the Educational Benefits of Diversity: Connecting the Scholarship in Higher Education to K–12 Schools and Classrooms

Abstract

In this AERA paper, I will discuss the key research lessons from the body of work in higher education and identify how some of those lessons would apply to K-12 work. In discussing the applicability of the higher educational research on the K-12 policy and practice debated, I will pay particular attention to the uniqueness of each of these two large educational sectors in terms of their distinct missions, enrollments and governance.
As I noted in a 2014 Educational Research article on the unfinished research agenda on student diversity in higher education, increasingly, the research has shifted away from questions about whether students benefit from diversity in higher education to questions about conditions that maximize and hinder those benefits. For instance, several studies show that both the substance of interactions and the quality of the educational context matter in terms of the impact of diversity on student learning and development.

Furthermore, we know that there are key internal and external factors in higher education that can either facilitate or undermine student learning in diverse environments. But we are still learning about how and why these factors can shape the educational experiences of all students in a diverse campus context.

In other words, it is clear that the research has evolved from a central focus on if diversity contributes to the educational benefits of students to crucial “how” and “why” questions. The connection between the “if” and the “how” and “why” has both implications for K-12 pedagogy and practice and could also benefit from some of the existing k-12 research on socio-cultural dimensions of learning, the inter-group relations and culturally relevant pedagogy.

Bridging the higher-education versus K-12 gap on these issues is fundamental to making both sectors of education stronger as they simultaneously face the pedagogical challenges of serving an increasingly diverse student population. Shifting our gaze to broader practices and allowing ourselves to question whether the pedagogical understanding that has developed in the K-12 literature cannot inform higher educational teaching and learning is important as well.

Meanwhile, this paper can help policy makers and practitioners consider how the body of scholarship that the higher educational research community has developed since the 1970s can support a rationale for pursuing school and classroom diversity in the K-12 educational system. For instance, it appears that policy makers, judges, and school officials have lost sight of the large body of research on the harms of racial segregation and racialized tracking. They are currently busy implementing policies that exacerbate that segregation, including high-stakes accountability systems and free-market based school choices policies.

This paper, framed around the lessons already learned from higher education regarding the rationale for diversity, will provide much evidence and support for K-12 educators trying to move forward on the “access” issues to address structural inequality.

Author

• Mitchell J. Chang, University of California - Los Angeles