Editors’ lntroduction 
 

Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 13, No 1, 2020 

1 

 

The foundation of Business Education is the same as every other discipline within education. 

As educators, we aim to develop critical thinking, inspire students to explore new concepts 

and encourage them to be responsible citizens who will lead future generations. However, 

each discipline, or group of disciplines, are inevitably faced with their own unique challenges.  

In addition to the general aims of Higher Education, Business Educators are tasked with 

inspiring the minds of future business leaders. This includes the complexity of understanding 

the functional areas that operate within a range of organisations as well as linking students’ 

future roles and influence to the social responsibilities that we all have, in other words, to 

become responsible business leaders. 

Discussing good practice is essential and it is the only way we can improve the student and 

educators’ experience, and develop our craft to adapt to the new generation of students who 

are entering our learning environments. Generation Z bring new challenges for us as 

educators, and learning from each other and drawing on good practice from other disciplines 

is an essential component in developing the business leaders of the future.   

This special edition of Compass evolved from the annual Learning and Teaching Festival 

within the Business School at the University of Greenwich. The Festival was developed to 

sharpen our focus on learning and teaching and inspire more people to engage in research 

and scholarly work in the area of pedagogy. The Festival includes mainly educators from 

within the school but also includes representation from our Transnational Education 

partners.  It provides a safe place to talk, share the challenges we face and, importantly, 

explore new and innovative ways to teach business and its related disciplines. 

Many of the items within this special edition were presented in the 2019 Festival, such as  

submissions by Reilly, Luo, Sun and Warren; Robson, and Mogaji.  There are also 

submissions from those external to the event who want to share either their practice within 

Business Education or how we can learn from approaches in other disciplines, for example 

Breen, and Krastev; Compton, Jackson and Bruce. We have a selection of thought-

provoking opinion pieces, conference reflections, a video, a case study and an article which 

cover a wide range of issues that are currently important to the world of Business Education.  

For example, there are a number of submissions that examine how social and cross cultural 

issues impact the way we teach our subject area and we have a selection  of opinions on 

how we can improve our delivery through innovative approaches such as role play, Guerrilla 

teaching and DIY exhibitions. This special edition therefore includes a wonderful range of 

ideas from across the academic community to challenge and inspire us as we take the 

practice of Business Education forward. 

 

Liz and Dawn 

 

Dawn Reilly and Elizabeth Warren, Business School, University of Greenwich, February 

2020.