Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart

Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart captures the unique nature of the complex work involved in helping people explore and embrace human diversity in its fullest. There is widespread agreement of the need for this special kind of teaching and learning. There is little agreement on how best to do it. This book set out to address that gap.  

It is the outcome of a developmental project by distinguished educators and authors Gallos and Ramsey, who asked seventeen management educators, a highly-diverse group of university professors and corporate trainers all engaged in some aspect of diversity teaching, to join them in a year of learning. Contributors agreed to put aside academic and corporate ways of thinking and writing and to openly explore the importance, personal meaning, nature, preparation for, and challenges of the work. Gallos and Ramsey then wove a polyphonic whole from the free-flowing, iterative exchanges among the contributors into what has been described as an honest and realistic portrait of this personal, at times painful, yet always energizing teaching.

Effective diversity education reaches to the core of instructors and students as both work together to probe a wide spectrum of social and political forces and of personal experiences and responses.  

The book offers a unique opportunity to look below the surface and behind the scenes at the diversity teaching and learning process.  The result is a powerful exploration of previously unexamined issues — the emotional tension, personal growth, soul searching, intellectual excitement, professional satisfaction, personal shame and pain, setbacks, and deep pleasures in educating and preparing grounded and responsible leaders for an increasingly diverse world. 

Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart is a staple in a large number of university, corporate, and government teaching and training resource centers around the world, a testimony to the power of diverse voices speaking openly and powerfully on common issues and concerns.

FROM JOAN

A number of courses and programs still use this book, and I am gratified.  I am also sorry that it is no longer available new from the publisher. The book suffered from a revolving door of editors and marketers during its development and release — and Joan Ramsey and I were pushing on a topic that made many uncomfortable.  To have done as well as it did with so little publisher assistance speaks to the power of the narratives and the book’s contributions. It has survived (and still trades in used and hand-printed copies) by word of mouth from loyal readers who pass it down to today’s and tomorrow’s leaders, educators, and managers.  The book’s content is more vital now than ever as we struggle as individuals, organizations, and nations to understand the full implications of our differences and the best ways to leverage them.

This book has been described as a classic. The process of creating and writing it was a magical, collaborative experience of iterative personal and professional growth for all involved. I am sorry that Jean Ramsey and I did not publish on the research model that underpins the work. It is feminist, deeply personal, engaging, empowering, and a creative wedding of qualitative and action research. Onward!

FROM THE BOOK’S COVER

As demographers paint multifaceted portraits of the twenty-first-century workforce, businesses scramble to understand the implications for their organizations, universities struggle to integrate diversity issues into their curricula, and individual instructors face questions of how to teach effectively about this increasingly important topic.

Teaching diversity is different from other instruction. Rather than exploring objective themes or imparting information on new management techniques, diversity teaching involves questioning our institutions and policies, our definitions of truth and equity, our self-images and our professional roles. It requires a deep personal journey of self-discovery and growth. Teaching Diversity explores that journey.

In this book, a diverse group of seventeen management educators offer instructors a map to the diversity terrain, helping them choose a personal teaching path, recognize crossroads, anticipate roadblocks, and sustain personal commitment along the way.

This is no ordinary edited volume. It is a creative and collaborative effort that will benefit readers professionally and touch them personally. The contributors–women and men from a wide range of ages, cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds–join forces in a commitment to provide a realistic portrait of this personal, at times painful, yet always energizing work.

Through heartfelt accounts of their own experiences, Gallos, Ramsey, and their colleagues take a unique look at the paradoxes inherent in the diversity teaching process and provide grounded insights and sound advice about how to prepare for the kind of teaching that changes lives.