1: Introduction

This book brings together several current debates around oracy, dialogic teaching and the role that academic talk can play in both widening access to higher education and creating more equitable learning opportunities. Oracy can be simply defined as ‘the skills¹ involved in using talk to communicate effectively across a range of social contexts’ (Mercer & Dawes, 2014, p. 2), invoking our ‘capacity to use speech to express [our] thoughts and communicate with others, in education and in life’ (Alexander, 2013, p. 10). Focusing on the value of talk in the higher education context is timely, not least because recent higher education reforms – such as the Universities Accord in Australia (Australian Government Department of Education, 2024a) – have renewed a commitment to increasing the percentage of people with undergraduate degrees, meaning growing enrolments from students from under-represented cohorts accessing higher education through ‘non-traditional’ pathways. Optimising such academic preparation pathways for diverse students, who have often had limited or disrupted schooling experiences (Syme et al., 2022), is key to expanding access and enhancing success of all students (Baker et al., 2022; Baker & Irwin, 2016). Evidence generated about the academic and sociocultural benefits of embedding oracy in primary schooling contexts (Mercer & Dawes, 2014; Mercer et al., 2017; Millard & Menzies, 2016) suggests that similar positive outcomes could also be seen for those transitioning into higher education.