Purpose- Even as sites for higher education work to transforms curricula and strive for greater diversity among students and faculties,little is done to create safe,inviting environments for people to openly discuss the contracditions and challenges in teaching about differences.The authors'purpose is to examine multiple and intersecting systems of power and privilege that deny marginalized voices a forum to challenge conventional hegemonic discourses of differences and streotypical representations within learning. The recognition of contradictory subjectype locations occupied by all the participants in the classroom,including the teacher ,is accounted for in crsitical feminist pegagogies that challenge who speaks ,who listens and why. As such,bridging the gaps,cracks ,holes or crevices from which commonalties and differences emerge is spart of the process required in understanding the differences.
Design/methodology/approach- This people provides subgestions for college faculty who want to critically challenge their students to explore their believs about persons deemed "different" in society and examinede nature of stereotypical percetions embedded in the representtations of the "other".
Findings- The authours maintain that faculty must provide opportunities for discussion while creating a safe environment free of jugdement during this time of exploration and discovery for all participants
originality/Value- Multiple strategies for exposing college students/teacher candidates to deffering views or cultural perceptions and misconceptions are provided. The auhors challenge college paculty to not only ezpose students to and array of views but also encourage students to voice their own views by interrogating the inherent systemic power of inequity insociety.