Editorial

Abstract

I

n the call for papers on the theme of social justice in higher education, co-authored by George Stamelos (University of Patras, Greece) and Sylvie Didou (Cinvestav – UNESCO Chair in Globalisation and Education, Mexico), which asked our colleagues to describe, based on their personal experiences and previous academic collaborations, the progress and limitations of policies aimed at improving social justice within their institutions, the coordinators of this special issue of the journal Académia proposed several sub-themes. The response to these within peer communities has been mixed. The coordinators had in fact identified the following as their main areas of interest: public policies aimed at the diversification (or segmentation) of higher education systems and at increasing enrolment rates, primarily through the establishment of institutions specifically designed to cater for students from vulnerable groups; initial and continuing professional development programmes for teachers facing massification and the growing heterogeneity of their student bodies; the overhaul of knowledge-transfer mechanisms during and after the pandemic, and the resources mobilised by institutions to adapt to a changing context and its risks. Some of these themes were addressed by several authors using distinct approaches (overviews of the situation in Greece or Chile) or public policy studies in Mexico.