Conference Agenda

The importance of diversity in higher education (HE) is increasingly recognized by European and local policymakers, as well as other stakeholders at state and institutional levels. The number of studies in this field is growing, with a search for "diversity in higher education" yielding over 675,000 results.

While there is limited comparative research on diversity in HE, there are numerous European regulations addressing the issue, such as the Paris Declaration of EU Member States from March 2015 and the European Commission's 2017 updated agenda for higher education (Claeys-Kulik et al., 2019). The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations also emphasize the importance of social well-being in the concept of sustainability. However, despite these political commitments, few European countries have implemented system-level initiatives to improve socio-economic inclusion in HE (Crosier & Sigalas, 2022).

Research on diversity in HE has focused mainly on data collection and less on the experiences, beliefs, and competencies of HE teachers. Literature suggests that attitudes and perceived skills of HE teachers in diverse classrooms are often moderate, negative, or poor. For example, research by Abacioglu et al. found that teachers' perspective-taking abilities and intercultural attitudes are essential for effectively managing diversity in the classroom (Abacioglu et al., 2020; Agirdag et al., 2012; Ajzen, 2005; Emmers et al., 2019).

Similarly, research on students with disabilities in HE by Emmers et al. found that HE teachers have moderately positive views and self-efficacy in providing inclusive education. These findings suggest that policy improvements should focus on empowering HE teachers in diverse classrooms. To do so, an understanding of the current state of affairs and investment in teachers' abilities, knowledge, and attitudes is necessary.

The three proposed contributions each look at one aspect of this. Starting with neurodiversity in the workplace, uncovering the consequences of the digital divide and equal educational opportunities, and continuing with an overview of experiences in inclusive higher education.

This paper approaches the topic of diversity in higher education (HE) through neurodiversity in relation to the HE workforce. Perhaps understandably, the focus for those researching diversity in HE has been upon on students and pedagogies in the sector. However, people leaving a university programme to move into employment do not change overnight with implications for leadership and management of the higher education workforce (O’Dwyer & Thorpe, 2013; Wissell et al., 2022) with particular issues for teachers of vocational education who often occupy a liminal place (Thorpe & Burns, 2016). The term neurodiversity has been used to signal that different ways of thinking, learning, and behaving are better understood as examples of diversity rather than as deficits in contrast with some discourses of special needs, draw on medical models of disability (Baumer & Frueh, 2021). The paper contends that there is a need to pay attention to the experiences, beliefs, and competencies of teachers, lecturers and other employees in HE regarding i) their own diversity and differences including, where applicable, their own neurodivergence (Hoben & Hessen, 2021) and ii) their attitudes towards their neurodivergent colleagues (Wissell et al., 2022). An employee is not the same as a student and insights from one context and set of relationships should not be simplistically transferred to another. Whilst there may be challenges commonly faced by people that are neurodiverse, it is a misguided assumption that these emerge in the same ways in every context whether as a student or an employee. The presentation draws on several research projects, both those explicitly using the neurodiversity paradigm and those adopting specific learning difference/ difficulty perspectives, to argue that the insights offered by the paradigm are a more fruitful way to understand the issues and address differences and diversity in higher education. It also analyses the problematic turn to pedagogical discourses in workforce management and the promotion of pedagogical leadership in the workplace, especially where it is presented as (yet another) leadership style, which deskills employees and removes their agency. The wider implications of the neurodiversity paradigm for theory, practice and policy around inclusion in higher education are explored drawing on the neurodiversity paradigm claim that social dynamics across forms of human diversity are similar, though contexts are not similar. Some limitations and constraints of the paradigm in researching diversity in HE are also considered.

Baumer, N., & Frueh, J. (2021). What is neurodiversity? Harvard Health, November 23. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-neurodiversity-202111232645. Hoben, J., & Hesson, J. (2021). Invisible Lives: Using Autoethnography to Explore the Experiences of Academics Living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 33 (1), pp. 37-50. O’Dwyer, A., & Thorpe, A. (2013). Managers’ understandings of supporting teachers with specific learning disabilities: macro and micro understandings in the English Further education sector. Cambridge Journal of Education, 43 (1), 89-105. Thorpe, A., & Burns, E. (2016). Managers’ and teachers’ perspectives of dyslexic teachers in the English and Finnish Further Education workforce: new insights from organisational routines, Oxford Review of Education, 42 (2), pp. 200-213. Wissell, S., Karimi, L., Serry, T., Furlong, L., & Hudson, J. (2022). Leading Diverse Workforces: Perspectives from Managers and Employers about Dyslexic Employees in Australian Workplaces. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(19), 11991. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191911991

Digital marginalization is well-known. Morrisette (1996) called the differential IT access among US households and schools the "digital gap." Theorists and educators have expanded this phrase since then. "Digital poverty" became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital poverty is "the inability to fully interact with the online world, when, when, and how an individual needs to," according to the Digital Poverty Alliance (2021). 2020's pandemic shocked UK education. Human interaction with learning and teaching resources changed overnight and appears permanent two years later. The fast use of technology to advance education created the biggest revolution in education custom and practice in living memory (Times Education Commission 2022). Before the 2020 pandemic, most UK schools had online platforms where students and teachers could interact and share content (Reimers et al 2022). After the epidemic, certain lesser-known platforms became essential to educational institutions' core offerings (OECD 2021). Accessing new or updated equipment was expected to be difficult for users. UK projects provided IT infrastructure to as many students as possible. Many poor students acquired equipment via philanthropy or school loans (Government Education Statistics Service 2022). Global technology businesses gave the poor special rates and "pay-forward" agreements (Children and Young People Now, 2021). These activities addressed Morrisette's digital gap, but users' proficiency with these services was more important. By following an updated Maslow 1970 hierarchy, this course transforms participants from digital poor to online learning and teaching champions. This lesson highlights how teachers had to change their methods overnight. The student-academic digital gap showed a power shift. Many "have" students (those with IT and digital services) wanted to study faster and deeper than the teachers could. Students had control because they expected a swift and thorough transition and no course content compromise. Late adopters, "have not" students felt burdened by a system that was changing faster than they could adjust (Rogers 2003). Teacher experiences varied. Many employees felt like "have nots" as they were swept into a new work style without the knowledge, skills, or resources to adapt quickly. Lessons varied. "Hands-on experience learning, production or access to real resources and equipment" made practical subjects like Nursing and Fine Art harder. Business and law classes moved online more easily (Birmingham City University 2021). This event will study how the five "C's" of digital teaching and learning—Conversant, Capable, Competent, Comfortable, and Championing—impact digital poverty through a competency-based hierarchy of demands (Gee 2022).

BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY (2021) COVID-19: An unequal Impact? Birmingham, UK. BCU CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE NOW, CYPN (2021) Disadvantaged pupils offered free data in bid to tackle digital divide DIGITAL POVERTY ALLIANCE (2021) How we define digital poverty GOVERNMENT EDUCATION STATISTICS SERVICE (2022) Laptops and tablets data, April 2022. MASLOW, A. H. (1970). Motivation and Personality (2nd ed.). New York: Harper & Row. MORRISETTE, L. (1996) in ROBYLER, M. D. (2003). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall. ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT, OECD (2022) REIMERS, F.M, AMAECHI, U, BANERJI, A, WANG, M (2022) Education to Build Back Better. Cham, Switzerland: Springer ROGERS, E. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed). New York: Free. TIMES EDUCATION COMMISSION (2022) Bringing out the Best: How to transform education and unleash the potential of every child. times-education-commission-final-report.pdf (documentcloud.org) accessible at < Internal server error | The Times & The

Higher education (HE) becomes more accessible for a student population with diverse identity characteristics due to the heightened attention in (inter)national legislation, research, and debates (Ainscow, 2020). The growing diversity in the student population begs the question on how to provide quality education for every student in HE: how to design inclusive higher education (IHE) (Rendon, 2006). This is shown in our general definition of IHE as providing high-quality education for every student: giving everyone the opportunity to thrive, realize their capabilities, engage, and contribute to the learning journey of others (Ainscow, 2015), aka full participation (Sturm et al., 2011). To create IHE, HE-teachers play a crucial role (O’Shea, 2016). However, according to Stentiford and Koutsouris (2020) and Shaeffer (2019) the variation in conceptualizations of inclusion that exist impacts HE-teachers unclarity about what inclusive learning environments and inclusive teaching practices are. Furthermore, HE-teachers are unaware about the necessary didactical skills to implement inclusion (Cotàn et al., 2021). To empower HE-teachers in having self-efficacy to teach inclusively, researchers and policy-makers need knowledge on HE-teachers understanding of, and needs for implementing, inclusion. A systematic literature review on HE-teachers’ understanding of inclusion as researched in academic studies between 2011 and 2021 underlines the lack of knowledge on HE-teachers’ understanding of, barriers for, and approaches to inclusivity (Korthals Altes et al., …). Additionally, it concluded that the HE-institution’s structure and policies heavily influences the space HE-teachers have to enact inclusive practices, which makes it important to conduct research in specific contexts. The importance of the (HE-institution) context, was reiterated in a study at one HE-institution in the Netherlands, here HE-teachers’ understanding of inclusion was analyzed through data from a survey, individual interviews, and focus group interviews (Goei et al., 2021). In this presentation we will present the results from these two studies, and a third study on HE-teachers’ and students’ understanding of and experiences with inclusion at four respective HE-institutions in the Netherlands and Flanders. In this last study, we conducted a document analyses on the D&I policies at the HE-institution and spread a survey on experiences with inclusive practices using CIT. CIT focusses on specific incidents (Flanagan, 1954), which lends itself to the subjective, and broad topic of inclusion. The collection of these three studies gives an overview of HE-teachers’ understanding of inclusion in general and of HE-teachers’ understanding of and experiences with inclusion in the specific context of the Netherlands and Flanders.

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