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. 

In considering writing as a craft, this presentation hones in on the details. It provides advice on how to deal with what 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. We discuss how to do these things effectively.

The workshop also considers writing journal articles that matter to both you and your audience. We need to attend to the writing’s artistry as achieved through a corporeal mode of mattering in which one’s heart, mind and identity are entangled (Barad, 2007). In discussing this 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 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 select and shape your writing with publications in mind from the start in order of a project 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); have extensive experience on the Editorial Boards of various international journals; and have designed and lead many workshops on ‘writing articles for journals’ for academic staff and emerging researchers (Author and Stevenson, 2017). The workshop is designed with interactivity and discussion throughout. Activities will include the following: • Engaging participants in understanding how to craft their article for first submission with the specific aims, vision and scope of journal in mind. This will support participants to express the original contribution to knowledge that their article makes, and provide guidance of how to situate their article in the broader field; • 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 engage in a worked example of peer reviewing to promote discussion as to how papers shift through multiple drafts through the process of journal submission; • Workshop leads will offer advice on how authors’ should respond to revisions and their responsibility to reviewer and editors suggestions for minor and major revisions. Workshop participant will thereby gain practical, detailed and helpful insights on crafting excellent academic articles for journals.

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.