What Makes Adult Education Compelling? Diversity as Enrichment Strategy

In the last decades of the twentieth century, continuing in the first decade of the twenty-first century, tremendous changes became visible in all segments of human society. On one hand, businesses came to realize that they were now serving a global customer base. On the other hand, educators saw increasingly diverse groups of students in their classrooms. These are only two of the many environments in which diversity could be discussed, but they are the two that will be the focus of this chapter. Human diversity manifests itself in a broad sense: age, ethnic, geographic, ability, religious, educational, political, and any other thinkable form of divergence. It brings many positive aspects, but also many complications. A much greater awareness is needed, for instance, in approaching student communities in each higher education institution today, due to the multiple dimensions of diversity they represent. This chapter will briefly review some of the changes that occurred globally in recent history, from the many foundational reasons such as the Internet, increased traveling, social networking, expanded mass media, and business entrance in many corners of the world, to the opportunities and points of caution to be observed when educating a diverse team of students that needs to be prepared to creatively and successfully improve the quality of life in a diverse global workplace.