Programme

10:15-10:45 Registration & coffee

10:45-11:00 Opening by Marjolein Deunk

11:00-12:00 Keynote on Gender diversity in education by Els Consuegra

12:00-13:00 Vegetarian lunch

13:00-14:00 Workshops on gender diversity

14:00-15:00 Keynote on Ethnic-cultural diversity in education by Orhan Agirdag

15:00-15:30 Coffee break

15:30-16:30 Workshops on ethnic-cultural diversity

16:30-17:00 Panel discussion with keynote speakers, led by Hanke Korpershoek

17:00-18:00 Drinks

Dealing with cultural diversity: Implications for educational inequalities

Orhan Agirdag

Many western countries are facing severe ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in education. Specifically, students with a cultural minority background tend to show lower academic achievement. Many studies have documented the pervasiveness of this achievement gap. However, the mechanisms that may both account for the gap and may provide avenues for interventions to close it, received less attention. In this presentation, we will focus on how schools deal with cultural diversity and examine how different school diversity models – i.e. assimilation, colourblindness or multiculturalism – impacts pupils’ academic achievement and their identities. We will argue that the preferable school diversity model depends on specific contextual characteristics.

Studying gender in education: how to apply the intersectionality framework
Els Consuegra 

The issue of gender inequality in education has been a continuing concern for over 40 years, in both academic and public debate. This keynote presents some theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence on a number of recurrent research topics such as the underperformance of boys in school and the feminisation of the teaching profession. Special attention is paid to intersectionality as a major theoretical paradigm that has its origins in black feminist scholarship but has recently emerged across disciplines. Intersectionality refers to the interconnectedness of social identity structures such as race, class and gender in shaping privilege and oppression. Numerous scholars have shown interest in the application of the concept in their empirical work but limited resources are available on how to operationalise intersectionality in research designs and analyses. This keynote discusses the variety of ways in which intersectionality is operationalised in contemporary social science and offers some concrete illustrations of the application in quantitative research on gender inequality in education.