Learning Diversity

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The Learning Diversity Concept

The concept of learning diversity as an alternative to traditional models of learning disability, was proposed by Dr. Peter McDonald and Dr. Michael Riendeau of Eagle Hill School in Hardwick, Massachusetts in a 2003 article in Independent School.. Learning diversity is an educational approach that rejects the idea that learning disabilities are characteristic of individuals and urges teachers and students to understand so-called “disabilities” as the intersection of the rigid expectations and procedures of bureaucratic systems with the inevitable uniqueness of learners. Learning diversity theory identifies the source of learning disabilities in the bureaucratic structures and systems of traditional schooling.

Premises of the Learning Diversity Movement

Critique of Exclusionary Definitions

The learning diversity movement critiques the use of exclusionary definitions, definitions that operate on the principle of excluding categories of experience (or symptomatology) rather than specifying criteria that must be met.  Traditionally, specific learning disability has been defined in this manner, notably as defined by IDEA (2004), the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (1991), and the DSM V (2013)

Locus of Disability

In learning diversity theory, learning disability is not understood as existing within the individual as an intellectual or neurological abnormality, but is instead considered to be a phenomenon that comes into existence when a society maintains the bureaucratic structures and systems of traditional schooling despite the cognitive and intellectual diversity of human beings.  The learning diversity model identifies the locus of disability in the conflict between narrowly defined expectations and the “inevitability of human diversity.”

Effect of Reified Norms

Traditional approaches to learning disabilities depend upon a conception of normalness as a discrete ontological category: there are normal and abnormal individuals Those who subscribe to a medical model of disabilities tend to treat normalness as a qualitative difference--a difference in kind. The tendency within bureaucratic systems is to establish quantitative cutoffs that create new categories of being, e.g., “learning disabled.” When we use “normal” and “abnormal”--as ways of classifying and distinguishing between types of human individuals, we create an underclass of people who are fundamentally different from others--as different as cats are from dogs or gorillas from graham crackers.

The Inevitability of Human Diversity

Tom Skrtic, at the University of Kansas, describes the intersection of bureaucratic structures and disability status succinctly in Disability and Democracy: Reconstructing (Special) Education for Postmodernity:

Given the inevitability of human diversity, a professional bureaucracy can do nothing but create students who do not fit the system. In schools, all forms of tracking…are organizational artifacts, unintended consequences that are compounded by misguided attempts to rationalize and formalize teaching. (Skrtic 1995, 248)

Adhocracy as an Alternative to Bureaucracy

Adhocracy, a term coined by Walter Bennis, is an alternative pattern of organizational structure. Learning organizations (link to Wiki) are one example of adhocracy in practice. An adhocratic leadership structure is organic and aims to decenter power and distribute it across teams, whether those teams be students or employees at a job site. The learning diversity movement seeks to reorganize schools and other learning spaces from an adhocratic perspective.

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This article "Learning Diversity" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Learning Diversity. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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