This workshop aims to create a collaborative space to share insights on writing approaches, reviewing practices, and publishing strategies for scholars doing qualitative and quantitative research that examines and theorizes the interrelated experiences of gendered subjects in formal and informal education settings.

Led by current researchers and editors with substantial experience of publishing in ‘quality’ journals across disciplines, ECER networks, and education levels the workshop is oriented to scholars at the beginning to their careers and those seeking to re-tool their skills. The workshop has a practical focus: to place of gender in relation to other key differences, to further feminist knowledge, philosophies, theory, action and debate.to share strategies, exchange information, and build networks. Its goal is to highlight ways to maximize involvement in writing, reviewing and publishing for scholars at any career stage who are striving for gender equality in education via their research and practice. The workshop leaders are currently co-editors of the leading, international journal Gender and Education.

Writing journal articles requires craft skills and artistry and is a corporeal mode of mattering in which one’s heart, mind and identity are entangled (Barad, 2007). In considering writing as a craft, this presentation hones in on the nitty-gritty, how-to and what are sometimes referred to as the ‘technical’ aspects of writing journal articles. It analyses the importance of writing titles that are clear, concise and eye-catching in an age of search engines and metrics. It reviews how to effectively structure a paper to maximize the clarity of the argument. It also suggests ways of creating a balance between theory and empirical data. However, writing a good article needs more than craft. It is about having something ‘new’ to say, it is about shaping what it is you want to say in ways that enable the writer to make an original contribution (theoretically and/or empirically) to on-going debates, and it is about staking a claim to enter a particular discourse community.

In discussion of the entanglement of heart, mind and identity, workshop participants will be invited to dispense with the notion that ‘good’ article writing requires ‘genius’ or ‘inspiration’, that writing can only be done ‘when the mood takes me’, or that it requires a long time ‘alone’. Instead, academic article writing as a material practice, a ‘habit geography’ (Dewsbury & Bissell, 2015). This is habit not as stale routine but as a corporeal event of lived importance which releases pleasure and gets the writing done (Author, 2016).

The workshop will provide important insights into the practices that shape writing, reviewing and being published in journals focused on gender research in education settings . The publishing world is rapidly changing, with greater opportunities for informal modes of disseminating scholarship, alongside publication in a wider range of open access journals. However, within this expanding field, established journals continue to hold considerable power. This power is reinforced by international rankings and ratings metrics across neo-liberal, higher education systems, and by institutionally-entrenched performative, accountability structures. These wider forces shape the careers of individual academics and their publication aspirations. Journals that are recognised as the leading ‘quality’ journals are, then, those that early career academics often to aspire to be published in. Such journals provide access to valuable discourse communities and the circulation of new ideas, knowledge and theory; and they are repositories of historical expertise and experience in mapping a field. The workshop is significant in aiming to demystify writing, reviewing and publishing in a ‘top’ international journal. 

The workshop has four objectives: 1. To provide insights from experienced educators, researchers and editors working with a range of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches on how to maximize involvement in drafting, writing, reviewing and publishing for emerging scholars; 2. To share ‘top tips’ on how to design research projects with outcomes and publications in mind from the start in order to ensure greater impact for your work; 3. To discuss and exchange ideas on reviewing practices that can be employed when peer reviewing work for journals that does not fit conventional models and expectations of research in education; and 4. To create an open and collaborative space for scholars to share strategies, exchange information, and build networks. The workshop presentation is led by experienced educators and researchers who are currently editors of a major international journal (Gender and Education) and have a range of experience on the Editorial Boards of various international journals, designing and leading workshops on ‘writing articles for journals’ for academic staff (Author and Stevenson, 2017). The workshop is designed to promote interactivity and discussion by first engaging participants in the review process as a helpful stepping stone en route to crafting excellent academic articles for inclusion in journals, recognising that journals publish what the specific aims, vision and scope of journal is. It will also promote discussion as to how papers shift through multiple drafts through the process of journal submission, and discuss authors’ response and responsibility to reviewer and editors suggestions for minor and major revisions. The workshop will use a range of exemplar texts designed to represent a spectrum of submissions of varying quality from high quality to low quality that typify submissions to a journal that specializes in gender and education with a strong focus on theory and qualitative design methods. Participants will be invited to read and conduct an initial review of two contrasting texts. There will also be an activity on journal aims and scope, advice for participants on how to express the original contribution to knowledge that their article makes, and guidance of how to situate their article in the broader field.

This workshop will provide participants with key insights into writing for publication and hands-on experience of reviewing academic papers. The workshop is led by experienced journal editors of an international journal on gender and education. Participants will engage in discussions focused on passing knowledge across generations of scholars, to enable the intergenerational transmission of the skills and practices of academic writing. Through these activities, participants will establish networking links that will extend the community of scholarly practitioners in the field and to encourage participants to become journal reviewers and board members.

Author (2013). anonymized for ECER review purposes. Author and Stevenson, J. (2017) Chapter anonymized for ECER review purposes. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe half way – quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. Dewsbury, J. D & Bissell, D. (2015). Habit geographies: the perilous zones in the life of the individual. Cultural Geographies, 22(1), 21–28.