Building Relationships, Valuing Diversity - A University Experience

Abstract

Ours is a very diverse society and increasily so. Portugal has become a diversity society and evidence show that such trend is here to stay. Diversity is indeeed a broad concept: some diversity is primarily cultural (ethnic origin, beliefs and different orientations of value and behaviours), but also at biosocial level (age, gender, physical capacity). The reality of diversity is increasily present in the portuguese universities, due to the growing number, in the last decades, of students belonging to different groups and communities. The study of this reality has been focused nevertheless up to now in the evolution of foreign students in the country.  It is however clearly relevant to study how the experience of diversity is felt by the university students in order to understand if that experience models the perception and acceptance of difference and which the impact it has on their personal and academic development. To this end, a questionnaire was applied to 48 students at a University in Lisbon. It was possible to verify that the different perspectives of the students, regarding their experience of diversity at the university, reveal that it constitutes a positive factor in allowing coexistence and interaction with difference.