This is the literature review is part of the HEA C-SAP funded ‘Promoting students resilient thinking in diverse higher education learning environments’ project. The project explores how social science students draw on their diverse backgrounds and community cultural capital in developing resilience within multicultural learning environments with a view to identifying curriculum and pedagogic practices which enable social science students to become future resilient thinkers in their lives and careers after university. Evidence from the literature suggests that whilst students value working in the ‘international classroom’ benefits from these cross-cultural encounters tend to be incidental in the absence of the conscious use of difference in the curriculum which is resilience-based and meaning-orientated. Thus the ultimate aim of the project is to identify curriculum and pedagogic practices that enable students to develop as ‘resilient thinkers’ through understanding the dynamics of difference and resilience.
