The current historic COVID-19 Pandemic moment has thrown into sharp relief the need for flexible and rigorous higher education that meets upskilling and reskilling needs of global workforces. Discussions of micro-credentialing predate the Pandemic but have received increased focus as potentially assisting in addressing perceived skills gaps.…

Indigenous leaders in higher education are restive, disaffected, and dissatisfied with the slow gyrations of change. Using Interest Convergence Theory, this paper will unravel the constraints inherent in institutional reform that delimit the influence of Indigenous senior leaders in the sector. Positioned amidst the burgeoning impact of…

Post-pandemic, there is a growing recognition that higher education needs to take a more proactive role in addressing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals -- the 17 goals for 2030 that aim to balance global economic development with the need to tackle climate change and protect our natural ecosystems. This change of focus has profound…

The teaching of white privilege in Australian tertiary settings is beset by a number of obstacles arising especially from resistance, disbelief and outright obstructionism in white students, and occasionally colleagues. The article summarises the historical and societal context regarding race relations, racism and white hegemony in Australia, then…

Formal evaluation of policies, programmes and people has become ubiquitous in contemporary western contexts. This is the case for equity and widening participation (WP) agendas in higher education, for which evaluation is often required to measure 'what works'. Although evaluation has a 'fundamentally social, political, and value-oriented…

Equity and widening participation (EWP) initiatives in Australia are increasingly reimagined in policy as sites where participants are constructed as competitor-individuals, with education considered only in terms of employability, social mobility and nation-state market competition. In the context of EWP outreach, and with school students in…

Over the last forty years, Australasian researchers have witnessed problems and negative trends relating to academics and students from marginalised groups operating within the higher education sector. This article demonstrates that these researchers have become increasingly aware of the need for more equitable practices in higher education.…

Climate change impacts cascade across scales and sectors, and present specific threats to education institutions and systems, including reduced educational access, participation and attainment by students. In this paper, we set out the pursuit of climate change mitigation and adaptation responses, grounded in commitments to equity and justice, as…

Key findings, analysis and recommendations that have emerged from a research project, 'Using Human Language Technology to enhance academic integrity, inclusivity, knowledge exchange, student diversity and retention' at the University of South Australia conducted in 2019 are discussed in this article. The primary purpose of the project was to…

In the entrepreneurial university, epistemic governance is exerted through external pressures of market competition, funding, university rankings and research assessment and internal processes of organisational restructuring and mechanisms of corporate governance to re/produce epistemic injustices. Data from a study of three Australian…

To address social inequality, many western governments have sought to pursue principles of 'widening participation' as a key policy response in higher education. Though originally intended to complement social justice policy agendas, alignment of education policies with broader neoliberal policy frameworks has led policymakers, such as those in…

Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we…

Universities serve several important functions in society today through research, education, and community engagement, not least helping people to live meaningfully in society and create a world worth living in. A kind of practice that seems particularly important in fulfilling such responsibilities is "critical educational praxis," a…

This is a secondary research discussion paper on the issue of non-conforming gender-inclusivity or neutrality in foreign language teaching of gender-based languages. Australian universities welcome increasingly diverse populations of students. One source of diversity among the student population is characterised by the notion of gendered…

Since Universities Australia's Indigenous Strategy recommended a sector-wide approach to 'closing the gap' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, universities have grappled with how to do this. Resisting mainstream approaches to curriculum development that eschew any kind of relational accountability (Wilson, Shawn. 2008.…