As educational researchers our work often focuses on, and unveils, problems related to social inequalities in our curriculum and teaching practices, policies and funding, and working or learning conditions. While these play out varyingly across national and organisational contexts, the broader trends are still recognisable. We can generally see, for example, how academic selectivity operates in tension with inclusion, and that intellectual canons often exclude enriching, alternative perspectives. Similarly, drives towards efficiency may sideline deeper, slower forms of knowledge co-production, and excessive standardisation inhibits our capacity for the bespoke. In combination, this means that our educational systems are invariably somewhat dysfunctional, riven with entrenched structural barriers to acting and thinking as we might want to, even obscuring the exploration of better ways of doing things. The question within this is can we, as practitioners, reconcile these contradictions and in doing so promote greater equity and decency? If so, how?

This keynote first of all highlights the range of impediments to social justice that we face in education as a whole and in higher education in particular, recognising where these pressures stem from and how they are manifest. More importantly, though, it identifies where we can find and create gaps for making meaningful and positive differences in our teaching, research, and academic citizenship. Some of these can feel insignificant; on an individual basis they may be, but they can also have very real impact while cumulatively constituting – and contributing to – something far bigger. Others are more profound, and as we progress in our careers, the opportunities for making more space and fostering more fundamental changes will present themselves. In short, we start small and never stop, and through collaboration, reflection, and a little extra effort where possible, we get closer to the higher education we imagined was there.

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