INTRODUCTION

This book is about student writing in higher education. It sets out to explore academic writing practices in higher education with particular reference to the experience of so-called ‘non-traditional’ students in the United Kingdom, that is, students from social groups who have historically been largely excluded from higher education. (A range of terms is used to refer to such students in different higher education contexts; for example, ‘educationally disadvantaged’ in South Africa, ‘disadvantaged minorities’ in North America.) The principal arguments in this book are as follows:

1 Current ways of thinking and talking about student writing in official discourse are limited, working against the more recent aim of widening access to students from social groups historically excluded.