"Embracing Diversity: Inclusion in Education and Society"

Diversity is a contemporary topic in education and educational research that is looked at from manifold perspectives. While some perceive increasing diversity as a challenge to the education system and to society, others emphasise the merits of diversity and demand not only to act more sensitive towards diversity but also to embrace it. Inclusion presents an approach to respond to diversity – not only in education.

The conference will bring together latest social science research and its key findings on diversity in terms of horizontal and vertical differences in societies. The aim is to discuss how to deal with diversity, how to make use of diversity and how to tackle diversity-related challenges. Studying diversity is strongly related to the study of inequality, as the structural categories such as social class, gender, ethnicity, disability or religion that are used to describe and analyse diversity are axes of inequality at the same time. It also appears meaningful to consider different sociological levels of analysis in terms of how diversity can be approached, including the micro or micro-social level (e.g., students, teachers, parents), meso level (e.g., educational institutions, non-formal and informal settings) and macro level (e.g., education systems, educational policies). Highly intertwined with diversity is the notion of inclusion. Inclusion is about granting respect and recognition to all people as well as enabling social participation in various key areas of society irrespective of any personal characteristic such as gender, disability, ethnicity or any other axes of inequality. In education, inclusion means to treat all students in their uniqueness, to consider each individual’s needs and to let all students participate and achieve together. In consequence, inclusion implies that (educational) institutions or settings should adapt to the needs of the individual (students rather than making them adapt to institutional boundaries.