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In recent years, diversity and inclusion in higher education has become a topic of increased interest both nationally and internationally. Given the importance of this topic in today's world, it is surprising that the research is limited, especially with university students in the rural areas. This study examines on-campus students' perceptions of university diversity initiatives, and their value to the university environment.

Focus-group interviews with both undergraduate and graduate students from a public university in rural Michigan, USA, were conducted. Focus groups were used in this study because they are a particularly good method for generating discussion and stimulating ideas.

Overall, the participants identified several positive attitudes toward diversity and inclusion that included being accepting and respectful. However, it is significant that some participants are limited in their perceptions of culturally diverse backgrounds, which has resulted in some anxiety.

This study not only provides guidance to current institution administrators to create effective inclusive environments in their university. It can also be treated as a model for other rural universities, as building a successful inclusive environment in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Ontario principals make sense of difference within student populations and how this sensemaking influences how they do their work.

The paper reports on a qualitative study in Ontario, Canada that included 59 semistructured interviews with school principals from English public, secular school districts in Southern Ontario.

Four themes emerged in principals’ descriptions of student populations: perceiving everyone as the same, or homogeneous; perceiving visible differences associated with particular religions, race and cultures; perceiving invisible or less visible differences, such as academic differences, socioeconomic status, mental health issues, gender identity and sexual orientation; and perceiving both visible and less visible differences through an inclusive lens. When asked about how their understanding of difference influenced how they did their work, principals’ responses varied from not influencing their work at all to influencing practices and activities. Participants’ context – both personal and local – influenced some of the work they did in their role as school principal. Lastly, multiple sources of disconnect emerged between how principals understood difference and the practices that they engage in at their school site; between their sensemaking about difference and diversity and preparing students for the twenty-first century competencies as global citizens; and between principals’ understanding of difference and diversity and existing provincial policy.

Study insights not only contribute to an existing body of literature that examines principals’ sensemaking around difference, but also extend this line of inquiry to consider how this sensemaking influences their professional practice. These findings pose additional research questions about how to approach principal professional learning for inclusive and equitable education. For example, even though principals are contractually responsible for students in their care, why is it that their efforts toward equitable and inclusive schooling appear to be limited to the school site and not the wider community?

Study findings can be used to inform principal preparation programs and professional learning opportunities. Namely, these programs should provide the skill development required as well as the time needed for principals to reflect on their local context and beliefs, and to consider how their local context and beliefs are connected to larger societal efforts to create a more inclusive and equitable society.

School leadership is integral to creating and building more inclusive and equitable public education that improves all students’ success at school. As Ontario’s general population becomes increasingly diverse, it is imperative that principals support success for all students; this can only happen if they understand the complexity of difference within their student populations and beyond, how to address these complexities and how their own understandings and beliefs influence their leadership practices.

Although other papers have examined how principals make sense of difference and diversity in student bodies, this paper also explores how this sensemaking influences how school leaders do their work.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a holistic diversity lens with the aim to enhance the understanding of the multifaceted paradigms for diversity management at the tertiary level.

This contribution takes the inspiration of existing diversity paradigms used in business settings and relates them to higher education. It then articulates them in greater depths in line with the diversity segments of the so-called higher education awareness for diversity wheel and seeks a common denominator that may be shared across disciplines by adding an eclectic and context-specific approach.

It was identified that the underlying assumptions which constitute the commonly known diversity paradigms are only partially applicable for the tertiary level. It is further suggested that in view of the highly dynamic kaleidoscope of higher education institutions, multiple, at times conflicting rationales for diversity management need to be addressed.

This paper seeks to address the paucity of studies with regard to diversity management at the tertiary level. By drawing on relevant paradigms and relating them to specific diversity segments, this study intends to make a meaningful scholarly contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether attention, emotion, and cognitive regulation (CR) may be strategies to advance one’s ethnic identity.

The paper is presented in three parts. The first section discusses integrative inquiry (INIQ) (Bresciani Ludvik et al., 2016), a mindfulness methodology and mindful inquiry training program, as a potential pathway to help mitigate stress and enhance healthy development and well-being strategies that combat stressors related to ethnic and racial identity; and increase opportunities for positive ethnic identity development. INIQ was designed to influence areas of the brain associated with attention regulation, emotion regulation, and CR in order to decrease stress and anxiety, and heighten executive functions of undergraduate and graduate students. The second section discusses an exploratory study to see whether INIQ resulted in higher mean scores for participants on their ethnic identity, as assessed by the multigroup ethnic identity measure (Phinney, 1992).

The results indicated that there was a significant increase in pre-test and post-test scores for mindfulness (p=0.001) as well as the dependent measure for learning exploration (p=0.028) among 30 undergraduate, master’s- and doctoral-seeking students. There was also a non-significant increase for clear understanding (p=0.15) and overall ethnic identity achievement (p=0.387); and non-significant decrease for ethnic belonging (p=0.424).

These findings suggest that INIQ may increase students’ ethnic learning exploration, which is an important process in ethnic identity development (Phinney and Ong, 2007). This study also suggests that INIQ increases mindfulness in participants. The authors conclude with a discussion and recommendations to future INIQ and other diversity centered student support practitioners interested in influencing positive ethnic identity formation.

The purpose of this study is to explore and highlight the issues and challenges teachers face while supervising thesis and projects in distance/online learning mode.

This is a cross-sectional qualitative study. Grounded theory approach using Gioia methodology has been applied. Semi-structured interviews of 16 research supervisors have been conducted to explore the issues and challenges faced by the supervisors in guiding research students. Purposive sampling is used to select the subjects for data collection.

Results of the study reveal that the time constraints, official restrictions, irregular contacts and technology are the main issues faced by supervisors. Whereas student–supervisor interaction, diversity, perceptions, virtual communities and academic collaboration are the biggest challenges for the supervisors in distance learning. Lastly, it is found that students' attitude and supervisors' mindset are the key success factors in distance research supervision.

Findings of this paper will help institutions particularly in Asia, to strategically review their research programs to make these programs more effective. Effectiveness will encompass two things, timely completion and novel research. If these two things are addressed efficiently, comparison of distance learning with conventional learning will be more favorable for distance learning.

This study will be helpful for the top management of distance/online learning institutes to better equip their teachers and students to complete their research endeavors accordingly. This is an empirical research based on primary data collected from the research supervisors currently supervising thesis/projects at Virtual University of Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to report the design and evaluation of an inter-university collaborative project entitled “Blended learning for building student-teachers’ capacity to learn and teach science-related interdisciplinary subjects.” The project is a response of the science education faculty of three Hong Kong tertiary institutes to the challenge of catering to the diversity of academic backgrounds among student-teachers.

E-learning modules have been produced covering four content domains of science. These modules are designed based on the 5E learning model and are delivered to students using the learning management system provided by Moodle. The design of the modules is iterative, based on the evaluation of three consecutive rounds of trials through student surveys, and focus group interviews with students and course lecturers.

The evaluation findings indicate positive outcomes for certain attributes such as conceptual understanding, eagerness and confidence in learning science, and metacognitive reflection on students’ own learning. There are challenges to be met in relation to instructional design to cater for the diversity of student abilities, and enhance motivation in self-directed learning.

The project indicates the ways to develop students’ basic science knowledge in a mixed-ability setting through the design of self-directed e-learning modules blended with their major courses and possible measures to address the limitations of such design.

The study represents a conscious effort for the science teacher education faculty of different universities to pull together to tackle a perennial teaching and learning problem. The findings provide important insights into possible ways to blend e-learning with face-to-face learning approaches to better cater to the needs of science learners with mixed abilities to prepare them for interdisciplinary teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the neuroscience that underpins the psychology of compassion as a competency. The authors explain why this cognitive competency is now taught and assessed on modules of different degree subjects in a UK university.

The paper is divided into first, an exploration of recent psychology and neuroscience literature that illuminates the differences, and relationship, between empathy and compassion for safeness building in teams. Within that, the role of oxytocin in achieving social and intellectual rewards though the exercise of cognitive flexibility, working memory and impulsive inhibitory control (Zelazo et al., 2016) is also identified. The literature findings are compared against relevant qualitative data from the above university, so far, nine years of mixed methods action research on compassion-focussed pedagogy (CfP).

These are that the concept and practice of embedding compassion as an assessed cognitive competency in university group work is illuminated and rationalised by research findings in neuroscience.

The limitations of the study are that, so far, fMRI research methods have not been used to investigate student subjects involved in the CfP now in use.

The paper has implications for theory, policy and practice in relation to managing the increasing amount of group work that accompanies widening participation in higher education (HE).

The social implications of what is outlined in the paper pertain to student mental health, and academic achievement; to policy and practice for HE curriculum design across subjects and disciplines; and for the HE remit to serve the public good.

A review of this kind specifically for student assessed group and its implications for student academic achievement and mental health has not, apparently, been published.

The current paper is part of a larger scoping review project investigating the intersection of leader(ship) identity development and meaning-making. In this review, we analyzed 100 articles to determine the current extent of literature that covers the intersection of leader(ship) identity development, meaning-making and marginalized social identities.

A review of the extant literature is included, and a conceptual model is suggested for further exploration into this critical and under-researched domain.

More research is needed at the intersection of leadership identity development, meaning-making and marginalized social identities.

As this area of study has expanded, scholars have noted an absence of research on the effect of multiple social identities, especially marginalized identities, on meaning-making and leadership identity construction.

Mezirow's theory of transformative learning aims to evoke change on a deeper level of learning. This qualitative study with 38 pre-service teachers enrolled in a Master's degree programme for teacher education in Austria used semi-structured interviews to explore how diversity skills can transform after diversity training applying Mezirow's theory of transformative learning. In these trainings, a disorienting dilemma was placed at the centre of the diversity training from which transformative learning took its start.

In an increasingly diversified school system, diversity skills have become a pedagogical necessity for teachers in their future workplace. However, many teachers state not feeling adequately prepared for diversity within higher education and their attitudes towards diversity oftentimes remain unchanged despite diversity training.

The findings were deduced from structured content analysis. They show that the diversity trainings led to new cultural frames of reference for the study participants on a cognitive and social level, but to a smaller extent on an emotional level.

The study follows a different approach than “typical” diversity trainings through Mezirow's theory on transformative learning contributing to making a real change to preparing students for their workplaces in diversified Austrian schools.

Social innovation education aims to equip students with the skills and mindsets to pursue sustainable and just solutions to complex challenges, yet many programs fail to address the power dynamics underlying unjust social structures. This paper aims to examine a social innovation course that integrates equity, diversity and inclusion principles through critical service-learning.

Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews of 25 students and 5 key informants in a qualitative, single case design to understand multiple perspectives on significant factors in transformative learning. Document review and auto-ethnographic insights provide additional case background.

Students identified the service experience as unique and high impact. Significant factors included the atypical service structure, the EDI framework, and the partner organization as an exemplar in the field. Students displayed a spectrum of learning, from recall and comprehension to critical evaluation, new worldviews, and behavior change.

The findings of this qualitative study pertain to one partnership but are generalizable to theories. These findings are plausibly transferable to other experiential social innovation courses embedded in elite, private, predominately white research universities.

This empirical case examines a unique pedagogical and curricular innovation. By seeking to understand factors and outcomes of experiential learning, this study contributes to the literature on social innovation education and critical service-learning. The analysis produced novel insights for faculty and institutions aiming to integrate equity, diversity, and inclusion goals into social innovation programs.