Maximizing the Impact of Your Article in Studying Teacher Education

The life of an academic was once relatively simple. One conducted rigorous research then submitted it to the editors of journals and books. Acceptance by a highly-ranked journal or a prestigious publisher demonstrated merit. A high level of citation by peers was evidence of impact. The best way to maximize the impact of one’s work was to become well-known through writing, speaking or doing.

While being published in Studying Teacher Education continues to be a testament to quality and a vehicle for disseminating work to researchers and practitioners, today there are more ways to mobilize knowledge and increase the impact of one’s work thanks to social media. The editors, with support from our publisher Taylor and Francis, are working to increase the impact of Studying Teacher Education by analyzing publishing data and developing a social media presence. At the same time, we invite authors to take steps to maximize the impact of current and future self-study research. Below, we highlight a few ways you can maximize the impact of your work. For much more valuable information, we encourage you to visit the Author Service section of the Taylor and Francis website: https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/category/published/.

Titles and Keywords

Why do some articles have a greater impact than others in terms of downloads and citations? While there are many reasons, including the quality, timeliness and relevance of an article, the choice of terms in the title and keywords appear to be important contributing factors. As the ways people search and read the academic literature have changed considerably in the past twenty years, authors need to change how they get the attention of potential readers. There are more academic and professional journals than ever before, thanks to the reduced costs and logistics of reviewing and publishing. Also, while many of us continue to read print copies of our favourite journals, most employ databases to access other articles on topics of interest. Others, particularly younger scholars, rely primarily on database and internet searches to locate scholarly articles.

An analysis of the six articles that appear on a list of the ten most downloaded Studying Teacher Education articles in both 2017 and 2018 suggests two simple yet effective ways in which authors can increase the number of ‘hits’ in searches, downloads and, ultimately, citations. First, rather than craft a clever title, write one that includes terms that are commonly used in searches. Second, in selecting keywords include both specific terms related to your article and appropriate broad terms. Common keywords selected, and often embedded in the titles, included teaching, learning, teacher educator, self-study, collaboration and novice teacher. These broad terms were generally accompanied by more precise terms that appeal to specific sub-groups, such as curriculum design, auto-ethnography, practicum, authority, and doctoral supervision. This is evident from the two most downloaded articles across these two years.

‘Getting Real: Exploring the Perceived Disconnect between Educational Theory and Practice in Teacher Education’ by Jean Ketter and Brian Stoffel from Volume 4(2) in 2008 was the most frequently downloaded Studying Teacher Education in 2018, and the second most in 2017. Its keywords were educational theory, real teaching practices, inner-city schools, first-year teacher, theory-practice connections, and social justice. As educational theory and theory-practice connections are popular terms in the literature, this article would have appeared in many searches. Inner-city schools and social justice, on the other hand, are narrow topics of interest to robust discourse communities.

The most downloaded article in 2017, and third most in 2018, was Mary Lynn Hamilton, Laura Smith and Kristen Worthington’s ‘Fitting the Methodology with the Research: An Exploration of Narrative, Self-Study and Auto-ethnography’ from Volume 4(1) in 2008. The keywords methodology, self-study, narrative inquiry and auto-ethnography – which echoed in the title – seem to have attracted readers interested in one or more of these related methodologies.

While getting your article seen is important, the stronger measure of impact is rates of citation. Six of the ten most cited articles in our journal, including two articles by Dinkelman, Margolis, and Sikkenga (2006a, 2006b) – ‘From Teacher to Teacher Educator: Experiences, Expectations, and Expatriation’ and ‘From Teacher to Teacher Educator: Reframing Knowledge in Practice’ – at #2 and #6 involve ‘becoming a teacher educator.’ This suggests that many readers are drawn, at least initially, to self-study as they grapple with their practice as novice teacher educators. The most cited Studying Teacher Education article since the journal began, focuses on critical friendship and self-study, ‘Self-Study, Critical Friendship, and the Complexities of Teacher Education’ by Schuck and Russell (2005), as does the most cited article published in the last five years, ‘A Layered Approach to Critical Friendship as a Means to Support Pedagogical Innovation in Pre-service Teacher Education’ by Fletcher, Ní Chróinín, and O’Sullivan (2016). This reflects a strong interest in critical friendship as both a method and as a means of demonstrating trustworthiness. Other most cited articles also address methodological issues (e.g. Hamilton, Smith, & Worthington, 2008; Loughran, 2006) of concern to novice and experienced practitioners. Titles and keywords that attend to these concerns are more likely to be read and cited. Mostly, the citations for self-study articles tend to be in self-study publications. In order to widen the circle of researchers and practitioners who are aware of self-study scholarship, we should also aim to publish our work in other journals and cite our colleagues in the self-study community when writing articles for diverse author audiences.

Increasing Social Media Presence

Social media has become an important means of sharing both personal and professional information with a wide range of people. While Facebook and LinkedIn pages are good general means of sharing new work with friends and colleagues, there are forms of social media that are better suited to in increasing the visibility and impact of scholarly work. You might begin with your personal webpage, professional blog and institutional/departmental website

Twitter has become a popular means of disseminating ideas among policy-makers and scholars. It is particularly effective in making people aware of new work in a timely fashion. For example, King, Logan, and Lohan (2019), by sharing ‘Self-Study Enabling Understanding of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: An Exploration of Collaboration among Teacher Educators for Special and Inclusive Education’ on Twitter, generated significant interest in the online version of their article months before it appeared in Volume 15(2) of Studying Teacher Education. Readers are much more likely to view the online version of a journal if they are prompted by a tweet or mention on other social media, so authors would do well to tweet about their article. The Author Services\website includes a section titled ‘Tweet Your Research.’

ResearchGate and Academia are two social media sites that are specifically directed to academics. By joining one of these online communities, academics can promote their own work while discovering scholarship by like-minded individuals. A tension for scholars on these sites concerns when and how it is appropriate to share work. Some people are too casual in making their work available, thus breaching the copyright of authors and publishers. Others err on the side of excessive caution, declining all requests for access to published scholarship. All named authors of articles in Studying Teacher Education with email addresses get 50 free eprints they can share with colleagues or contacts on social media. So, if three researchers collaborated on a paper, the article would be entitled to 150 eprints to share (50 per author). That’s a lot of readers, and a lot of potential citations

Citing Purposefully

As a community, it is important to acknowledge and build on the thoughtful work members have contributed to intellectual discourse on practice. Building on past work strengthens the argument for your own article and its contribution to moving the field forward. It is also worth noting that thoughtful framings of common challenges in the field, as well as strong literature reviews, are often cited by subsequent authors in the field. As academic journals are accessible to most graduate students and teacher educators, it is relatively easy to track down citations from Studying Teacher Education in order to dig deeper into areas of interest. Furthermore, citing our journal increases its impact as determined by research metrics. We also encourage you to publish self-studies in other specialized and general journals in education and beyond; if you do so, be sure to cite purposefully from the self-study literature and, particularly from Studying Teacher Education.

Articles in This Issue

Social justice has become a topic of considerable interest in self-study, as is evident in the devotion of an entire section in the 2nd International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (Kitchen et al., in press) to this theme.

The first article, ‘Attending to the Concerns of Teacher Candidates in a Social Justice Course: A Self-Study of a Teacher Educator,’ by Julian Kitchen wrestles with the challenge of balancing a commitment to social justice with respect for the concerns of teacher candidates. Attending to the voices of teacher candidates, as expressed in exit cards and reflective writing, led the author to propose that a relational approach, in which teacher educators model humility, vulnerability and receptivity, may be more effective in nudging future teachers towards more inclusive practice.

‘The Hidden Elephant of Oppression: Shaming, Mobbing, and Institutional Betrayals within the Academy – Finding Strength in Collaborative Self-Study’ by David I. Hernández-Sacaa, Jennifer Martin,and Sohyun Meacham challenges the complacency of teacher educators and the academy generally regarding our progress on social justice. The three authors describe their experiences of ‘violence within the academy” that ostensibly is committed to social justice. Their accounts speak to the ongoing challenges faced by early scholars building careers on the margins: either as members of marginalized or minoritized groups and/or as professors working in contested areas. Sharing their stories lead to three common findings: (a) harsh course evaluations from mainstream students, (b) mobbing tactics from academic peers, and (c) institutional lip-service to diversity masking oppressive environments. Self-study, in addition to providing a vehicle for articulating these experiences, helped thee authors build a community of three that gives then strength as they continue to challenge thinking in their scholarship, teaching and their institutions.

While ‘Their Drawings Were Eloquent’: Learning About Drawing as an Arts-Based Self-Study Method for Researching With Children” is not ostensibly about social justice, the positionality of the South African authors, Khulekani Luthuli, Nontuthuko Phewa, and Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, and their participants make it of interest to researchers interested in uncovering new stories. Two South African teachers, with their university-based research supervior, employed drawing as an arts-based method to gain insights from children in their schools. The two original research exemplars are presented in the form of a dialogue to illustrate how drawing can be ‘a productive, age-appropriate, and enjoyable mode of bringing children into self-study research.’ While this work is identified as ‘valuable to teachers in diverse contexts who are interested in expanding their repertoire of child-friendly self-study research methods,’ this article is a model of how to demonstrate arts-based methodology through showing practitioners at work rather than by simply telling.

In ‘Self-Study in Teacher Education and Beyond’, (Kitchen (in press)) suggests that self-study needs to expand beyond teacher educators writing about their experiences working with teacher candidates in university classrooms. One dimension of teacher education beyond the university that is under-studied is S-STEP is the vitally important work related to field experiences (Petrarca & Van Nuland, in press). Two articles in this issue suggest that attending to field experiences benefits teacher educators and candidates alike.

‘What Do We Supervise For? A Self-Study of Learning Teacher Candidate Supervision’ by Mark M. Diacopoulos and Brandon M. Butler offers fresh insights into supervision and the importance of factoring the practice teaching experiences of teacher candidates into university classroom preparation. This article focuses on Mark’s development as a university supervisor of teacher candidates in schools placements. With the help of Brandon, as critical friend and mentor, novice Mark developed a clearer vision of teaching and learning within teacher education program that led to more ‘rationale-based practice.’ While this work will be of particular interest to novice teacher educators, it challenges us all to attend to teacher candidates and to stay connected to the field of teaching.

Community-based field experiences are the focus of ‘Three Museums and a Construction Site: A Collaborative Self-Study of Learning from Teaching in Community-Based Settings’ by Erica R. Hamilton, Amy Burns, Alison E. Leonard, and Linda K. Taylor. These four teacher educators examine the ways four community-based field experiences extended teacher candidate learning enhanced and challenged their work as teacher educators. While developing and sustaining community-based initiatives is time and energy consuming, this study suggests that interrupting ‘formalized notions of schooling and of teacher education’ is healthy for all concerned. The authors also had the foresight to frame their work as an inquiry, thus contributing to S-STEP literature and to their scholarly output.

Another avenue for widening the scope of self-study to is to move beyond teacher education to higher education and the professions (Kitchen, in press). ‘Transitioning to Teaching Science in Higher Education: Exploring Informal Dialogical Approaches to Teaching in a Formal Educational Setting’ by Nichole Nageotte and Gayle Buck is a study of and by university science instructors. The development of meaningful dialogue, generally regarded as a critical component of teaching, is the focus of this study of Nichole’s classroom practice, with considerable support from her collaborator Gayle. They identify four criteria for successful dialogue: preparation, student interest in the topic, clear instructor expectations and, most interestingly, student autonomy and control. The authors draw on a rich data set – critical friends meetings, journal entries, student surveys and audio recordings of classroom dialogue – to build a compelling case for dialogue in higher education classrooms.