Teaching Diversity in Healthcare Education: Conceptual Clarity and the Need for an Intersectional Transdisciplinary Approach

In this chapter, we explore the complexity of difference and the implications of this complexity for diversity education in healthcare. Drawing on fundamental ontology and epistemology from philosophy, education, and healthcare, we explore the importance of concepts, theories, and vocabularies in the development and delivery of diversity education in healthcare. We discuss the need for conceptual and theoretical clarity in many areas of diversity education, the importance of intersectionality in this respect, and the discord that exists between theory and practice in this context.

With this in mind, we then go on to consider solutions to the challenges of teaching and researching diversity education by evaluating the importance of transdisciplinarity as a vector for transforming understandings of complexity. With reference to the work of others as well as our own, we conclude by exploring the possibility of using an intersectional transdisciplinary approach to teaching and researching diversity education in healthcare. The implications of such an approach are considered in relation to institutional commitment and holistic working practices, thereby suggesting that conflict, debate, and subjective experience are important for bridging the divide between theory and practice.