Introduction [to Doctrina perpetua: brokering change, promoting innovation and transforming marginalisation in university learning and teaching]

Introduction [to Doctrina perpetua: brokering change, promoting innovation and transforming marginalisation in university learning and teaching]

It is arguable that, in addition to brokering change and promoting innovation, contemporary
universities have a responsibility to direct their teaching and learning activities at transforming
marginalisation. This contention derives from the fundamental and enduring ambivalence attending
discussions of the purpose and significance of universities. On the one hand, they can be seen as “ivory
towers” and hence as the bastions of privilege and the repositories of “high culture”, overseeing the
maintenance of what the elite determines is the best of a nation’s heritage. On the other hand, and by
contrast, they can be viewed as the vehicles for progressive social change and as the sites for
interrogating current issues in terms of whose voices are heard and whose are silenced in relation to
those issues. Given this ambivalence, it is clearly incumbent on universities to find ways of confirming
that they contribute to disrupting and subverting sociocultural inequities rather than replicating them.
In keeping with the emphasis on diversity and heterogeneity evident throughout this book, the
authors of the chapters in this section have been encouraged to deploy a number of conceptual and
methodological resources in engaging with the theme of transforming marginalisation in preference to
the section editor predetermining a single, fixed definition of “marginalisation” and its
“transformation”. At the same time, each chapter identifies particular attributes of groups of learners
that might potentially render them at greater risk than other groups of not attaining their educational
goals and links those attributes with specific strategies that have been demonstrated through evidencebased
practice to reduce that risk—at least for some learners in those groups. What emerges is a picture
of considerable complexity, with some strategies proving effective for large numbers of students and
conforming to the features of current best practice in university learning and teaching, yet also with
some elements of marginalisation remaining remarkably resistant to amelioration and transformation.
Understanding this complex and somewhat contradictory picture is crucial to taking up the challenges
and opportunities that mark the intersection between doctrina perpetua and transforming
marginalisation.

File reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/author.