Chapter 7, "Teaching
Difference as Institutional and Making it Personal: Moving Among Personal, Interpersonal and Institutional Constructions of
Difference" by Jennifer Mease, addresses a challenge that she has learned while helping students challenge individual human
differences and move toward an institutional understanding of human
differences.
A simple example will illustrate the importance of checking the [beta] value and the relevant magnitude of
difference when interpreting 'no statistically significant
difference'.
For Korzybski,
difference was not the absence of 'sameness' (that would make 'sameness' fundamental, which seems a basic structural assumption of the aristotelian metaphysical worldview).
Leveraging
Difference does not compromise important values and goals for equity and justice.
Brian Paddick, CSV Make a
Difference Day, c/o Community Service Volunteers, 237 Pentonville Road, London N1 9NJ (www.csv.org.uk/difference)
According to Cordelia Fine, we should be skeptical about reports of brain
differences between the sexes.
"It encouraged me to feel like there are crucial
differences between men and women, and those have to be celebrated and acknowledged instead of pushed down."
People are individuals first--just because empirical evidence shows a general
difference between men and women on spatial-rotation ability doesn't mean every man will outperform every woman.
The results of this study suggest that epistemological
differences exist among pre-service teachers at precisely a moment in which they should be receptive to the notion of teacher development and student learning as a gradual, effort-laden process and that these
differences affect the way in which they approach academic tasks.
Differences in attitudes based on gender and disability have also been reported, generally indicating that girls possess a more positive attitude toward disability than do boys (Archie & Sherrill, 1989).
If three-year
differences are seen as appropriate and if most sex between young people three or more years apart is not forced, then the sexual behavior that is occurring between partners with a smaller age gap is even more likely to be consensual.