Challenging our own attitudes

3. Why we need to challenge our attitudes

 It is easier to connect with people who share the same values, a similar vision of the world, familiar experiences. In a school context this may lead to parents who share similar outlooks with education professionals feeling more comfortable and those from different social, cultural or linguistic backgrounds feeling ill at ease or even unwelcomed. As members of the education community, in the interests of reducing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students and of offering a fairer school experience to all pupils whatever their backgrounds, we have a duty to ensure that we are not ignoring, albeit unintentionally, the needs of those who are different from ourselves. In order to do this, we need to regularly question our practices and to make explicit the implicit so that we facilitate mutual understanding between all those who contribute to a child’s education.