Throughout March 2021, LtPF has been celebrating diversity! Our network of partners is made up of different groups of people, organisations, projects, sports and places – all brought together to achieve our common goals:

• increasing the number of ethnically diverse young people in sport and physical activity
• diverting ethnically diverse young people who are at risk of becoming involved, or are already involved, with the Criminal Justice System

Our Local Delivery Partners such as Reach Up Youth in Sheffield, Platform Cricket in London and Exiles Together in Gwent have told us how diversity is a vital aspect to achieving their positive impact on participants. Let’s investigate why.

Acknowledging diversity is a way of recognising the presence of difference. We acknowledge our awareness that we are different from other people in many ways, such as in our skin colour, family background, and religious beliefs.

This experience is psychologically important because being different from others influences the way we think and feel about ourselves and then how we interact with those around us. In that sense, others’ beliefs and expectations about the traits and behaviours of those around us play a role in presenting a kind of “script” for how we should conduct ourselves in the many facets of life.

A lack of diversity in society and local communities means that people are less exposed to the many different acts and scenes that would be presented by all these different colliding and diverging “scripts” directing us how to manage the many different experiences that come with perceiving varied groups of people in a range of scenarios.

In simpler terms, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Lacking an awareness of the fact that you are not only different from others, but also that others' differences are important, relevant and life-forming, results in a diminished toolbox to take on all that life has to throw at you.

This has been noted in a seminal study documented in the book, The Power of Opportunity to Change Young Lives. This book by Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin recounts the findings of a pivotal longitudinal social investigation looking into the benefits of running a high-quality after-school programme on the life trajectories of hundreds of African American young people from low socio-economic backgrounds, growing up in the Cabrini-Green housing project, Chicago during the late 1980s and early '90s.

The Community Youth Creative Learning Experience (CYCLE) comprised of an after-school programme that involved enrichment activities, tutoring, access to scholarships and summer camps. Offering these activities to Chicago’s poorest young people had a profound effect on their expected life trajectories. Almost all of those who had gone through the programme managed to graduate high school and also escaped poverty, along with their children.

Exposing these young people to resources, activities and indeed people from outside of their neighbourhood allowed them to “see” how they fitted into society differently. It allowed the young people to “see” different ways to tackle life’s challenges, with the help of committed people around them, that in turn allowed them to become more than what was expected of them. It broke the cycle of the negative effects of poverty, extending to generations that succeeded them.

A similar concept is described by the psychological theory of identity-based motivation. This explains how people are motivated by their identity (McCartney, 2018.) and by how people perceive their identity in relation to those around them.

Psychological study by researchers from the University of California have articulated the importance of identity-based motivation for academic achievement and overall performance in young people doing science subjects at university. Through examining the relationship between the gender of science subject instructors and academic achievement, this study was able to find marked differences not only in student exam marks but also in non-performance related outcomes, like interest shown in the taught subject, self-efficacy, behavioural engagement and how useful they saw this subject in the context of their career goals when their subjects were taught by instructors of a gender that matched their own.

Encouraging diversity gives people the opportunity to see that the ability to occupy a range of different spaces and positions need not be far out of reach whatever context they find themselves in. They are able to see a blueprint for success, a road less travelled etched by those (sometimes few) who have forged ahead of them.

Celebrating diversity highlights the differences among people but also adds to their toolkit for success. Diversifying communities, workplaces, sports teams and schools offers the chance for people to see and hear different perspectives on issues that we experience in common.

Diversity therefore serves a very functional purpose for all areas of modern life through offering more routes for problem solving and innovation.

Follow our researcher Morgan Mitchell on Twitter

References: Jones, J.M., Dovidio, J.F. and Vietze, D.L., 2013. The psychology of diversity: Beyond prejudice and racism. John Wiley & Sons. Solanki SM, Xu D. Looking Beyond Academic Performance: The Influence of Instructor Gender on Student Motivation in STEM Fields. American Educational Research Journal. 2018;55(4):801-835. doi:10.3102/0002831218759034 You Can't Be What You Can't See: The Power of Opportunity to Change Young Lives.  Milbrey W. McLaughlin, Foreword by Arne Duncan and Afterword by Greg Darnieder.  McCartney, M. (2018). You can't be what you can't see. Science, 360, 504-505.