Resisting homogeneity in higher education: perspectives from praxis

This Special Issue of International Studies in Widening Participation (ISWP) features papers authored by participants from the National Writing Program for Equity and Widening Participation Practitioners convened by the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) at the University of Newcastle. In 2019 four two-day workshops were held in Newcastle, co-convened by the authors of this editorial. Important contributions were made by Professor Andrew Brown, Dr Anna Bennett, Dr Steven Threadgold, and Dr Jo Hanley who have generously offered their expertise and experience in ways that helped to make the workshop series a vibrant pedagogical space. In addition, each participant was allocated an academic mentor who is recognised as a leading scholar in the field. To these mentors we offer our deep ongoing gratitude, as it is often within this critical friendship that participants continue to find their voice given the ongoing sensitive development of “writer-centred relationships where the focus is the writer’s situation and needs” (Croker & Trede, 2009, p. 231). The authors of these works are equity practitioners from a diversity of Australian higher education contexts. They have laboured for over a year during intersecting national and global crises to develop contributions to the literature at the nexus of practice and research on equity and widening participation. Against a backdrop of bushfires, a global pandemic and ensuing economic shocks, the authors were supported to produce work that interrogates and extends thinking in relation to topics they identified to be important considerations for the field. In this editorial we provide a short overview of the programmatic foundation from which the Special Issue papers have developed, as a way of contextualising their contribution to the field of equity in higher education in Australia. We then briefly introduce the papers, identifying key questions they ask of us as readers, while working to draw out a common theme across the papers – namely, that of the problem of homogenisation – to identify the collective contribution this issue makes.