Higher education has faced profound teaching challenges in recent times, as it has delivered a widening range of courses to students of increasingly diverse backgrounds, expectations and levels of preparedness. These challenges call for a more radical shift in teaching than simply incorporating remedial support within existing teaching programmes. This paper argues that neither traditional 'knowledge delivery' models of teaching, nor a purely 'student-centred' approach, adequately addresses the challenges of student diversity. Instead, it proposes an emphasis on the sociocultural nature of learning and teaching, modelling learning as acquiring the capacity to participate in the discourses of an unfamiliar knowledge community, and teaching as supporting that participation. It explores the challenges faced by students struggling to make meaning in strange intellectual and social surroundings, and outlines ways teachers can structure courses and tasks so that very diverse cohorts of students can progress together in meeting those challenges.

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Successful university teaching in times of diversity offers a contemporary, practical and effective introduction to university teaching. This book, edited by Nicola Rolls, Senior Lecturer at Charles Darwin University (Australia), Andrew Northedge and Ellie Chambers, Emeritus Professors at the Open University (UK), suggests practical tips with solid theoretical foundations aimed at equipping university teachers with transferable skills to enable them to face a multitude of challenges in current diverse university contexts. Throughout the book, there is a strong emphasis on the important underlying role of language and communication for learning and engaging with academic knowledge. Given the clear emphasis on academic language and learning, this book is to be highly recommended to academic language and learning practitioners, not only for their own teaching, but also in their efforts to work collaboratively with subject academics across all disciplines.

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