Special Issue - Call for Papers Vol 7, Iss 2 2020

Enabling and equity programs are crucial to widening participation in higher education (HE), yet little is known about the distinctive philosophies, practices and identities of the educators who work in this space. Building on the invaluable work of Bennett et al. (2016) in mapping the pedagogies of enabling education, and following McDougall and Davis (2011) in situating the reflective practitioner as the subject, rather than the object, of such research, we seek research papers that are grounded in the knowledge and experience of enabling and equity educators.

Proceeding from the assumption that, in Parker Palmer’s (1998) words, ‘good teaching cannot be reduced to technique’ (p. 10), we believe that enabling and equity educators are ideally placed to examine, reflect and report on the complexities of teaching for widening participation. As Cunliffe (2018) writes, in an important sense, academics themselves ‘are a source of data’—not in a positivist or instrumentalist way but in the constructivist sense that all knowledge is situated, contextualised, relational, dialogical and dynamic. With Whitehead and Huxtable (2016), we see educators as ‘knowledge-creators as well as users of existing knowledge’ (p. 7). Within enabling education, there is a particular need to articulate and codify such knowledge because of its marginal position within higher education. Not only do enabling programs operate on the fringes of the institution, but they are also associated with what Motta and Bennett (2018) identify as a feminised ‘pedagogy of care’, which is often devalued within a system dominated by neo-liberalism. Nevertheless, like Motta and Bennett (2018), we hold that there is ‘much that broader HE might learn from these feminised and otherwise devalued experiences, knowledges and practices of nurturing inclusion, diversity, dignity and democratisation’ (p. 644).  

Accordingly, we invite papers that draw on—but are not limited to—educators’ own experiences and identities in enabling and equity education, based on the understanding that ‘our personal lives, identities, and feelings [are] deeply connected to and in large part constituted by—and in turn [help] to constitute—the sociocultural contexts in which we live’ (Anderson 2006, p. 390). We encourage a wide range of methodologies and theoretical approaches, seeking to foster what Cunliffe (2018) has called a ‘scholarship of possibilities’: one that accepts and encourages ‘different ways of seeing, being in and generating knowledge/ knowing about our world’ with the aim of producing ‘original, insightful, imaginative and responsible work’ (pp. 1430-31). We invite contributors to engage with frameworks such as Brookfield’s (2017) ‘critical self-reflection’ and Alexakos’s (2015) ‘authentic inquiry research’, among others, in developing autoethnographic and other accounts that acknowledge the specificity of both learners and educators, and of the many contexts in which teaching and learning for equity occurs. Papers should draw strong connections with existing literature and make clearly articulated contributions to existing knowledge of enabling or equity education and/or educators.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Enabling/equity educators’ philosophies of teaching and learning, the ways in which they are enacted, and their relationship to the educator’s own education and life experiences
• Narrative case studies of specific learning and teaching situations involving innovative pedagogical or pastoral interactions
• Accounts of becoming an enabling or equity educator, and the role of diverse personal identities in this
• Accounts of the relationship between enabling or equity educators and their institutions, including the educator’s identity within the institution
• Reflections on the role of enabling and/or equity education in the current higher education landscape
• Accounts of ‘pedagogies of care’ on campus and at a distance/online

We welcome contributions not only from those who teach in enabling programs but also from those whose work is focused on widening participation in higher education, including academic learning advisers and educators working at other levels within the sector.

For Special Issue enquiries please contact Guest Editors: Dr Ann-Marie Priest and Dr Jenny McDougall (School of Access Education, CQUniversity) by email a.priest@cqu.edu.au j.mcdougall@cqu.edu.au

To submit a paper, please first register with the journal as an author.

Other enquiries, including EOIs for peer reviewing submissions to the Special Issue, please contact the Journal Manager: Dr Jo Hanley joanne.hanley@newcastle.edu.au

References

Alexakos, K. (2015). Being a teacher|researcher: a primer on doing authentic inquiry research on teaching and learning. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373. doi:10.1177/0891241605280449

Bennett, A., Motta, S. C., Hamilton, E., Burgess, C., Relf, B., Gray, K., Leroy-Dyer, S., & Albright, J. (2016). Enabling Pedagogies: A participatory conceptual mapping of practices at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Newcastle: Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education, University of Newcastle.

Brookfield, S. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Cunliffe, A. (2018). Wayfaring: A scholarship of possibilities or Let's not get drunk on abstraction. M@n@gement, 21(4), 1429. doi:10.3917/mana.214.1429

Kreber, C. (2013). Empowering the scholarship of teaching: an Arendtian and critical perspective. Studies in Higher Education, 38(6), 857-869. doi:10.1080/03075079.2011.602396

McDougall, J., & Davis, W. (2011). Role reversal: educators in an enabling program embark on a journey of critical self-reflection. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 51(3), 433-455.

Motta, S. C., & Bennett, A. (2018). Pedagogies of care, care-full epistemological practice and ‘other’ caring subjectivities in enabling education. Teaching in Higher Education, 23(5), 631-646. doi:10.1080/13562517.2018.1465911

Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.