Managing student diversity in business education: Incorporating campus diversity into the curriculum to foster inclusion and academic success of international students

ABSTRACT
The past three decades have witnessed significant growth of culturally and linguistically diverse international students in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. International students now constitute an important component of the student body at many universities, especially in their business schools. The increased presence of international students has generated new demands and challenges for these business schools, and a number of issues related to international students have been identified in the literature. However, the increased presence of international students has not led universities and business schools to develop adequate responses to the issues and make subsequent changes in the curriculum. Diversity on campus continues to be managed in roughly the same way as in business organizations. Drawing on the notion that diversity should be defined and understood in terms of context, this conceptual paper redefines diversity on campus, identifies limitations of current diversity education in the higher education context, and develops a competency-oriented approach to improve inclusion and academic performance of international students.

Investigating ‘moments’ for student agency through a differentiated music curriculum

Research provides compelling evidence linking music-making to academic achievement and increased wellbeing for disengaged students. However, in the Australian context, education policy has narrowed its focus to literacy and numeracy, with an associated ‘accountability’ framework of mandated assessment and reporting practices. Within this context teachers are being asked to demonstrate how, through their pedagogical practices, they meet the needs of all their students. As a result of this, differentiation has become the lens through which student learning and engagement are being monitored. Drawing on data from a large state secondary school, this paper examines how a differentiated music curriculum is being implemented to support student agency. We demonstrate that, through a range of formal and informal music programs, agency is enhanced through the development of self-reflexive and self-referential learning practices. However, we suggest that differentiation, alone, does not unmask the reasons behind students’ different learning experiences nor does it necessarily redress entrenched educational inequalities. We also suggest that the ‘moments’ for student agency, created by these music programs, may have as much to do with the ‘fragile’ position of music within the broader school curriculum where the spotlight of high-stakes testing is directed elsewhere.