Promoting Equality, Valuing Diversity: A Learning and Development Manual

Issues of equality and diversity are complex, difficult and sensitive. Some people believe they have already learned everything. This training manual is designed to help people to build on the strengths and avoid the pitfalls of the past. It dispels some of the myths and oversimplifications around issues like political correctness , and shows how dangerous it is to oversimplify and distort some very complicated issues. Writing in the foreword to this manual, Neil Thompson says: Promoting equality and valuing diversity is not an easy task in fact, it is a major challenge. However, it is well worth the time, effort and energy invested in it. This manual provides a background knowledge base underpinning the work and a series of 22 exercises on: race and ethnicity; gender; age; disability; sexual orientation; and religion. It also contains a guide to further study. It is an excellent resource that will be of immense value to training and development professionals; managers interested in promoting understanding in their teams or staff groups; practice teachers and mentors; and lecturers and tutors in colleges and universities. Training and learning about equality and diversity are an ongoing process, and in a spirit of encouraging further debate, study and learning about them, the author suggests a series of key issues for trainers to consider, but not to follow unthinkingly: remember that discrimination is more than prejudice; focus on education and learning, not punishment or indoctrination; adopt a positive approach geared towards valuing diversity and promoting equality, rather than encourage a negative, defensive, cover your backs mentality; go beyond the law; do not oversimplify language issues; work together; set the right tone; feature power and empowerment as key themes; make use of self-monitoring; and be humble. Above all, he stresses that we will all make mistakes, but it is hoped that we will learn from them. As Neil Thompson author of several books in this area writes: We are now in a position to make the transition from the dogmatic reductionism that has haunted us for some years now and, using the foundations provided by the diversity approach, build a much more positive, more sophisticated and thus more effective approach to tackling discrimination and contributing to more humane workplaces and a more humane society more broadly. The background material and accessible exercises in this manual can be of help to all of us. Anyone who registers their purchase with RHP can obtain, at no extra cost, the worksheets, case spotlights and presentation slides in PDF and PowerPoint format.