The impact of the hidden curriculum on international students in the context of a country with a toxic triangle of diversity

Abstract

The hidden curriculum, which refers to the ideologies that remain implicit in educational content, is often studied in the context of developed countries with a colonial past where there are efforts to redress the historical injustice of the colonial past. In this paper, we examine the impact of the hidden curriculum on international students in a country with a toxic triangle of diversity. The toxic triangle of diversity describes a context where there is extensive deregulation, voluntarism without responsibilisation of organisations, and absence of supportive organisational discourses for diversity. Most studies of the hidden curriculum have taken place in countries where there are national laws for equality, institutional responsibility to bias-proof the curriculum, and supportive discourses for diversity. Drawing on a field study with nineteen international students (nine in the field of business studies and ten in other subject fields), we demonstrate how the hidden curriculum remains unattended and how it is legitimised through macro-, meso- and micro-level interactions that students have. We show that the hidden curriculum serves to silence different forms of exclusion, loneliness and discrimination that international students experience in the context of a toxic triangle of diversity. We suggest ways forward for undoing the damage done through the hidden curriculum in toxic contexts.