Diversity and Nursing Education

Question: Analyzed key components, including: What the word diversity means within an educational context Primary and secondary diversities Three diversity identifiers How various nursing accrediting bodies represent diversity The difference between diversity and culture Multicultural education and how it relates to diversity Why diversity amongst nurses and nurse educators is important Why understanding learner diversity and styles is important in nursing curriculum. Answer: What is Diversity? Diversity can define many things. The diversity meaning is diverse based on different opinions. However, diversity in the context of education was first recognized as intergroup relations movement in the United States at mid-twentieth century. The term diversity can be recognized as "otherness." This "otherness" is present in almost every context of human life (Erwin et al., 2010). The humanity is itself recognized as diverse as the human nature differs from each other. The same concept goes for education. Education is a vast field and types education varies depend on the different cultures. To understand the diversity, it is first important to have a profound knowledge about Primary and secondary diversity. Primary and Secondary diversity There are two dimensions of diversity. The primary diversity dimension may include physical abilities, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and race. On the other hand, the secondary diversity, which is another dimension, includes those factors that may be variable. The secondary dimensions may be variable or can be easily changed but are not limited to several contexts such as geographic location, religious beliefs, parental status, educational background marital status, income, military experience and work experience (Kinbanian Stomph, 2010). There are four stages of diversity development such as reactive, proactive, redefining and transformed. It is found that the primary types of diversity cannot be changed while the secondary types of diversities are variable. The fluctuation of secondary types of diversity is dependent on the experiences gathered by a human in a lifetime (Stahl et al., 2010). These life experiences are significant as the uniqueness of a person is dependent on their experiences, which were gathered throughout their lifetime. In the medical field when the nurses enhance their experience and gather more knowledge- it enhance the experience and diversity of the medical field. Diversity identifiers The diversity indicates the differences of identity, which can have a direct impact on the social experiences. In turn, this social experience includes access to the resources as well as the status of a person. Diversity is considered as contextual and social (Alegria et al., 2010). The diversity includes normative and majority identities. The diversity identifiers are age, ethnicity, ability, religion, gender, Socio economic status and race. Among all these diversity identifiers, there are three main identifiers such as ethnicity, gender, and religion. From the research, it is found that the diversity is built up based on the previously mentioned identifiers and showed their impact in the different context of society. How diversity differ from culture? In most of the social context, it is found that the diversity and culture are overlapped with other; therefore, it become difficult to make the difference between culture and diversity. The fact is "culture" represents characteristics of a society by means of different incidents. On the other hand, the term "diversity" emphasized differences between individuals. Diversity is aimed to discover the differences between the individuals who belong to the same culture or same place by means of their contrasting features (Enquist et al., 2011). Unlike diversity, culture cannot be considered as a biological matter. A city or country could be mono-cultural or multicultural, but the people who live in the country or the city must possess a vast range of diversity. In the research, it is found that culture is very dynamic as it is always modifying and changing its course from one to another. However, it is not easy to measure whether the diversity is changing or not as diversity is a vast field and varies depending on the individuals characteristics. On the other hand, it is found that the researchers defined culture as a complex thing, which is achieved by a human as a part of their membership in the society and may include belief, knowledge, custom, morals, law and art. Multicultural education and diversity Multicultural education is known as a set of strategies, which is taken by the U.S government to offer assistance the teachers while responding to the various issues developed by the "rapidly changing demographic" of the students. The multicultural education system is helpful to provide knowledge to the students about contributions and existence of diverse groups, cultures, and histories (Stahl et al., 2010). It is easy to assume that the U.S is going to develop cultural pluralism in future. Therefore, the multicultural environment in a classroom is very significant in order to promote critical thinking as well as decision making while the U.S society moves towards the cultural pluralism. The multicultural teaching includes the ethnic diversity, celebrations, cultural and educational gaps. It is found that every culture is unique and has their rules. Therefore, it is difficult to cross the barriers and treat person same who belongs to the different cultural background. However, the proper implementation of multicultural education may be proved as beneficial to reduce the barrier and treat individual same. Nursing education and diversity- how is the bonding. The nursing profession is a noble one as it offers services to the humanity without differentiating between individual persons. The nurses have an opportunity to optimize their experimental learning about the underlying principle to serve health care, which is culturally appropriate and patient-centered. In the nursing profession, the nurses have to deal with their culture, the culture of the patients and most of all diversity. Therefore, it is important for a nurse to have a profound knowledge about the different ethnic groups, culture, and races so that they can provide quality care to the patients using a professional "culture of medicine" (Kinbanian Stomph, 2010). On the other hand, it is found that there is an existence of health disparities at the national, regional, state as well as in global levels. The health disparities mean the differences in health services provided to the people based on their education, social class, language, age, gender, race, geographical location and sexual orientation. To eliminate the health disparities, it is important that the nurses and the caregivers should learn about the diversities and cultural differences but provide same quality care to all types of patients. It is found that AAMC took the challenges to eliminating health disparities from the medical history of the 21st century. References Alegria, M., Atkins, M., Farmer, E., Slaton, E., Stelk, W. (2010). One size does not fit all: Taking diversity, culture and context seriously.Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research,37(1-2), 48-60. Enquist, M., Ghirlanda, S., Eriksson, K. (2011). 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