Ragged Edges: delivering quality tertiary teaching in post‐colonial times

Abstract

This paper focuses on practices about which many tertiary teachers are publicly silent and privately stumped—the thorny issue of equity for non‐English speaking background (NESB) international students, as it is to be enacted in higher degree teaching and evaluation practices. While there is no end to the amount of rhetoric about equity and NESB students to be found in educational ‘quality’ documents, the ethical and logistical problems raised by this issue for tertiary teachers are many. We wade into this murky water by documenting a struggle that a team of ‘equity‐conscious’ lecturers has had to bring our concerns about the potential failure of one such student to the attention of the institution in which we seek to do ‘quality’ teaching.