Straying into Education

Publishing in your field versus pedagogical research

The Journal article was called ‘Writing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Articles for Peer-Reviewed Journals’. It was chosen as an accessible well written and engaging article which identified the challenges but also ways one might approach writing for journals focussed on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Essentially 4 different options for writing were presented: empirical research articles, conceptual articles, reflective essays, and opinion pieces. In addition we discussed the potential value of publishing an ‘educational’ approach in a more specific scientific journal as this may reach a wider audience of colleagues who could directly benefit from considering the implications for their own teaching in the field.

Discussion during the journal club session considered how useful it was to read the reflections of the authors who had very different initial backgrounds and experiences in terms of educational research. A number of us identified with the author who had a scientific research background prior to undertaking educational research. As part of this discussion we considered the infrastructure of support we could put in place to help each other have the confidence to consider publishing our educational research. A publication pipeline was identified in addition to the TSAR sessions already available, including the Journal club as an opportunity to present a paper in an area we need to research further, presenting our own research to critical friends, having ‘writing sessions’ where people are encouraged and supported to make time to write.

The journal club was seen as a good opportunity to find time to read a paper and chat about it as part of a community. In recognising that not everyone could come to the session it was decided we would produce a summary which would be available in text and as a short video for people to access. This would also be linked to a Yammer group as an opportunity for wider discussion.

Finally in recognising that often we are solving issues in our educational approaches and that we move on once the solution is in place and don’t necessarily think about publishing, we decided that the inception and future development of this journal club provides a potential opportunity for a future educational publication which we hope others will want to be involved in.