Unfulfilled promises: how inventories, instruments and institutions subvert discourses of diversity and promote commonality

Abstract

This paper looks at the paradox of how recognition of diversity through research into individual differences, in such areas as learning style, cognitive style and personality, has had the reductionist effect of promoting commonality. This has been the outcome of the competition between inventories; the reduction of diversity to characteristics which can be defined, categorised and measured; and the application of these theories of diversity to facilitate and justify the tendency to promote commonality in learning and teaching behaviour in universities.