Diverse perspectives and lived experiences of educational work

In the current higher education context, performative metrics encourage academics to categorise their work as teaching or research or engagement. While institutional rhetoric often promotes collaborations across disciplinary boundaries and with industry and community groups, bureaucratic structures tend to discourage any straying from familiar disciplinary areas. Such structural rigidity not only underappreciates the complexity of the educational work being undertaken in these collaborations, but fails to recognise the nuances that exist in the overlapping spaces within and between these categories. Contemporary challenges in a globalising world do not fit neatly within traditional disciplinary or institutional boundaries. As teacher educators and education researchers, we derive great energy and insights from working and researching within these ‘borderlands’. The forms of educational work that exist at the edges of these academic imperatives are often rich, challenging and of significant value in terms of meaningful learning experiences. They are, however, little understood and as a result can be undervalued and misunderstood by the academy. This editorial frames a special issue of the journal 'The Australian Educational Researcher' explores the concept of educational work and its interdisciplinary applications in a range of sociocultural and educational contexts.