Background:
I am not affiliated with a tertiary institution and have never published an article in a peer reviewed journal previously so do not have any background by which to judge my current work.
Context for article:
This is intended to be applied to schools with students up to about 15 years old ie Preschool to grade 10 in Australia.
The article:
In 2000, I implemented a new Science course at a difficult, low socioeconomic high school. At the time schools had a lot of freedom in approaches. I was concerned about poor engagement and discipline at the school so implemented the course in a way that I hypothesised would boost engagement. The result was as intended and very interesting so I spent the next 12 years researching motivation to try to understand why it worked. This article is about that original implementation, the follow up research and implications for compulsory schooling.
MY QUESTION:
Because I am uncertain about my ability to write this article and even more uncertain about how to categorise it, I would like people to read the article. if they can find the time and advise me:
Is the article worthy of publication?
Is the article of a quality that could be published?
Are there glaring technical or framing errors that might block its publication?
Do you have any general advice about the article?
Mark - correct me if I am wrong. I sense you are writing an overall account of your experiences over the last 12 months - rather than your article being a primary research paper where you have collected data, analysed etc. If that is the case, then 'magazine-style' journals are the best to target for readers that look for newsworthy and anecdotal accounts. If you haven't collected data etc - but would like to publish as a primary research paper - you could consider an 'auto-ethnography'.
Mark - correct me if I am wrong. I sense you are writing an overall account of your experiences over the last 12 months - rather than your article being a primary research paper where you have collected data, analysed etc. If that is the case, then 'magazine-style' journals are the best to target for readers that look for newsworthy and anecdotal accounts. If you haven't collected data etc - but would like to publish as a primary research paper - you could consider an 'auto-ethnography'.
Thank you Dean Whitehead . Your help clarified it a bit for me. My problem was that my initial data collection was unscientific because at the time I didn't realise that it was going to be so interesting. In a sense it was action research but undocumented. The follow up was literature review to discover what research already existed, then research of the dominant theories to find explanations for the results. I will look at the idea of auto-ethnography which I have never heard of before. Appreciate your advice.
Just looked at Auto-ethnography and indeed that describes the process well.
Hi Mark - not a problem. I'm a big fan of action research - especially PAR. You could potentially construct it with your students being your co-researchers etc - and describe change cycles/emancipation etc - and draw on critical social theory. However, if I was a reviewer, I would be asking for methodological specifics i.e. specific data and forms of analysis. That said, you could still structure it as action research - as there are many forms and particularly under the action 'inquiry' umbrella i.e. co-operative inquiry, appreciative inquiry etc. However, I still think that autoethnography would be a good fit. Good luck with it.
Thanks again Dean Whitehead . I've started looking at the autoethnographic option. Appreciate the advice.
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