Writing for Scholarly Publication

Behind the Scenes in Language Education

Christine Pears Casanave, Stephanie Vandrick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135633936
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection of first-person essays by established authors provides a wealth of support and insights for new and experienced academic writers in language education and multicultural studies. Although writing for publication is becoming increasingly important as these fields become both more professional and more competitive, few scholars talk candidly about their experiences negotiating a piece of writing into print. These essays will help researchers, practitioners, and graduate students expand their understanding of what it means--professionally and personally--to write for publication.

Carefully crafted, focused, and provocative, the chapters in this volume document authors' experiences with a range of practical, political, and personal issues in writing for publication. Many portray the hardship and struggle that are not obvious in a finished piece of writing. Readers are encouraged to resonate with the events and issues portrayed, and to connect the narratives to their own lives. Practical information, such as contact information for journal and book publishers, manuscript guidelines, and useful books are included in appendices.

Although organized thematically, the essays in Writing for Scholarly Publication: Behind the Scenes in Language Education overlap in many ways as each author considers multiple issues:
*In the Introduction, the editors discuss key aspects of writing for scholarly publication, such as writing as situated practice, issues faced by newcomers, the construction of personal identity through writing, writing and transparency, facets of the interactive nature of scholarly writing, and intertwined political issues.
*Part I focuses on issues and concerns faced by "Newcomers."
*In Part II, "Negotiating and Interacting," the essays closely examine the interactions among authors, editors, manuscript reviewers, and collaborators; these interactions tend to be the least often discussed and these essays therefore offer readers fascinating insights into the sensitive social, political, and personal relationships among the many players in the scholarly writing game.
*"Identity Construction" is addressed in Part III, where authors share their experiences with and reflections on the ways that professional writing helps them construct their identities as writers and scholars.
*The essays in Part IV, "From the Periphery," help redefine what the notion of "periphery" might mean, from a concept with a negative connotation of "outsider" to a positive connotation of active and unconventional participant.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Issues in Writing for Publication

Christine Pearson Casanave
Teachers College, Columbia University, Tokyo, Japan

Stephanie Vandrick
University of San Francisco

It is increasingly important, even critical, for those in language education to write for scholarly publication, and not only for the obvious purpose of securing or keeping an academic position. Researching and writing about teaching and related topics also allows educators to grow professionally and intellectually, to share their ideas with peers, and to become better teachers through the reflective and critical processes of writing for a public readership. Yet many language educators, particularly but not only newcomers, resist the challenge of preparing work for possible publication, feeling intimidated by an activity that seems fraught with obstacles. These obstacles include the sense that getting into print is an accomplishment that only a few insiders with insider knowledge manage to achieve, that the process threatens egos and individual voice, and that people who get published somehow find it easier to write than those who do not. Our major aim in this book is to help demystify the activity of writing for publication, demonstrating that the obstacles are surmountable. We do not claim that such writing is easy, or that we have any easy shortcuts to doing such writing. But we do believe that by gathering and sharing the stories of well-published scholars in language education and English as a second language (ESL) in a book like this, we can begin to make the process of scholarly writing, in all of its aspects, more transparent, more accessible, less overwhelming, less intimidating.

In sharing their stories, our contributors reveal that they did not start off with any natural ease at writing, or take any uncomplicated or direct paths to writing and publishing. Each contributor has struggled, has overcome obstacles, has made difficult choices, and has experienced rejections and discouragement. In addition to revealing some shared issues in their stories, the contributors show in the specifics of each narrative that they have found different issues to be salient in their experiences of writing for publication. What the authors have in common is a willingness to pull the curtain aside, revealing that there is no mystery, no magic. However, our message is not as simple as “if you only try hard, you too can write and publish like these contributors.” We acknowledge that some readers face particular obstacles that may be hard to overcome. But we want to convey our belief that knowing something about other people’s paths to publication can contribute to how we understand our own writing issues, that most often obstacles can be overcome, and that there are many ways to reach one’s goal of contributing to a scholarly field through writing.

We are particularly interested in issues related to inclusiveness. We believe that scholarly writing should not be an insiders’ club for those already “in the know.” Issues of gender, race, national origin, and class, among others, can and do influence access to the world of scholarly publishing. Some of our contributors discuss being marginalized or being on the periphery and talk about how they have addressed writing from those positions. However, they have not allowed perceptions of insider privilege to dissuade them from participating in the increasingly diverse scholarly conversations in language education. Our group of contributors is multicultural, multiliterate, as are many in language education fields, and we believe that such diversity adds richness to our field and to its publications.

We asked contributors to write narratives illustrating issues they have encountered in writing for publication. We believe that the explication of the issues is important; we also believe that the narrative form has its own power in exemplifying the issues, and that narratives allow for understanding and connection in ways that straight exposition does not. Truth in academic writing, particularly in the more scientific fields, has been characterized as objective, as written in the third person, as distanced from personal feelings and experiences. Language education, especially ESL, was grounded in applied linguistics, which considered and perhaps still considers itself a science, so these attitudes have been the foundation of scholarly writing in many language-related fields. Yet we contend, as do an increasing number of scholars in our field as well as related fields, that there is another kind of truth to be obtained from narratives, stories, and first-person viewpoints, which people use to construct their realities and interpret their experiences (Bruner, 1991; Polkinghorne, 1988).

In the remainder of this introductory chapter we briefly discuss a number of issues that help frame our contributors’ narratives: academic writing as a situated practice, the invisible challenges of writing for publication, identity and voice, and power and position.

ISSUES

Writing as a Situated Practice Within Academic Communities

For a framework for understanding the practices of writing for scholarly publication we can turn to the notion of situated learning and situated practice. By focusing on scholarly writing as a situated practice we emphasize the importance of the very local and concrete interactions that take place in academic communities rather than broader theoretical abstractions about social practices. Much of our understanding of situated practice comes from the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Lave, 1997; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Several interrelated concepts from this work relate to how we wish to conceptualize the activity of writing for publication. The main concept is that of participation as a mode of learning, as opposed to learning as the acquisition of knowledge (Lave, 1997). The second concept is that of changing patterns of participation as indications of evolving membership in specialized communities (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). The third is the notion of peripherality, which we believe is treated somewhat apolitically and simply in the work of Lave and Wenger. They do stress, as we will too, that they wish the term to have a positive connotation (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 37).

First, it is unarguable that learning to write for publication necessarily involves engaging in, rather than just learning about, this scholarly practice. It is paradoxical in this regard that we feel strongly that a book of collected essays about writing for publication can contribute to readers’ own writing practices. It is perhaps by revealing practices that usually remain hidden that the authors can contribute to our understanding of how central the activity of participation is in learning to write for publication (see the discussion below on invisible challenges), and how important it is for writers to understand the local and concrete nature of that participation.

Participation in scholarly writing practices, in the first place, refers to interactions with people. When inexperienced writers consider what kinds of interactions are central to their writing, they may think of interactions with teachers and peer readers above all. The academic writing community, however, consists of many more players than these. It may include a tenure review committee made up of individuals who agree on some criteria for the kinds and numbers of publications a tenure-track faculty member needs but not on other criteria. It includes the authors that a graduate student or teacher reads and interacts with as part of a discussion in a literature review section of an article. And it includes above all the many and sometimes difficult interactions among authors, production editors, journal editors, and critical reviewers. Guiding a piece of writing into print requires knowing how to participate in all of these interactive practices in ways that do not jeopardize a writer ‘s chance of success. Although it may be possible to characterize such participation in general ways, the most consequential kinds of participation will be those in a writer’s immediate environment, the details of which can be learned only in situ.

Throughout an academic career, beginning in graduate school, scholars who write for publication change the patterns in which they participate in their academic communities. As documented by Lave and Wenger (1991) in their studies of apprenticeship and identity development in communities of practice, as people learn to participate in a community’s defining practices, they change their locations within the community, gradually taking on roles of more experienced members, whose patterns of participation differ from those of newcomers. In an academic setting, a graduate student might participate in data collection and analysis on a research team led by a principle investigator, but not actually write significant parts of the published report until dissertation time, if then (Prior, 1998). Graduate students who wish to use dissertations for future publications participate in very different ways with journal and book editors than they do with graduate advisors (Lee & Norton, this volume). Young faculty members who are not encouraged to write by a supportive administration, a situation that Stephanie Vandrick (this volume) experienced, participate in very different practices, and develop different academic identities than do faculty who receive strong support for participating in professional practices (see also the discussion of identity and voice, below). People who coauthor articles with colleagues develop particular social skills and sensitivities needed to bring a work into print (Hedgcock, this volume). Scholars who participate in local academic writing practices in their home countries develop the local expertise they need to bring their work into print but then must learn new participation practices when they move into a new academic community (Canagarajah, this volume). More experienced academic writers in general learn to take on increasing amounts of responsibility for their writing, which does not mean becoming a more solitary or independent writer. It means, on the contrary, becoming a writer who knows how to participate skillfully in the many subtle social, political, and linguistic practices needed to write for publication.

The notion of peripheral participation, first described by Lave and Wenger (1991), concerns the amount of engagement a person has with the defining practices of a particular community. Not meant to describe either a literal center or an edge, the concept of periphery (or location more generally) instead refers metaphorically to the ways community members participate (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 37). No community is made up of only core members or full insiders. As can be seen in any academic community, the community itself will be defined by multiple ways of participating by newcomers and oldtimers, and even by oldtimers who may reside permanently and by choice on the periphery. As described by Wenger (1998), the periphery of a practice is thus “a region that is neither fully inside nor fully outside, and surrounds the practice with a degree of permeability” (p. 117). People have “multiple levels of involvement” in a community, rather than simply belonging or not belonging. In Wenger’s conceptualization, those who are prevented from belonging are constrained by boundaries, not by peripheries, which are permeable. Important for the authors of the essays in this volume, Wenger notes that “the periphery is a very fertile area for change” given the many layers and more or less engaged ways of participating in any community of practice.

But as Suresh Canagarajah (this volume) notes, there must be enough transparency even in peripheral participation for (potential) members to become legitimate participants. He highlights the fact that the metaphorical periphery in academic communities is not a neutral place, but a political and a social location. The essays in this volume attest to the fact that the multiple ways that people participate in the practices of writing for publication and other professional practices cannot be separated from influences of power and expertise, many aspects of which are not transparent to outsiders. Nevertheless, those who feel marginalized or far from the metaphorical center of mainstream practices, such as Canagarajah’s Sri Lankan colleagues, “late-blooming” women scholars (Vandrick, this volume), women with families (Sasaki, this volume), and “practitioners” (Morgan, this volume), can sometimes find cracks in the system and can change and shift the rules of the game. In other words, changing locations as an academic writer involves far more than developing one’s writing skills. It demands that writers see the multiple layers of their academic communities, understand the many ways they can strategically participate in different layers of the peripheries, and hone their interactive political skills for finding their ways into and through the layers. Transparency of social and political processes helps, and this volume of essays contributes to this transparency.

Invisible Challenges

Many of us began to learn to write for publication by modeling our submissions on articles we were reading. This system has its advantages, of course, in that we learned what topics were being talked about in the literature, how people were talking about them, and conventions of style and form for particular journals that could be imitated easily. The system also deceives novice writers into believing that the polished nature of a published work results from the writer’s knowledge of the topic and expertise in writing, and that these two work together somehow to make the process of writing for publication relatively smooth and trouble-free.

This mistaken perception leads some novice writers to conclude that “others” write for publication—others who know more (Vandrick, this volume), or others who can write better, more “academic” English even when that prose may not be fully comprehensible to us as readers (Blanton, this volume; Cummings, this volume). It also ensures that novice writers will be shocked, dismayed, or outraged at some of the hidden processes, such as the time it takes from the first draft to publication, the bluntness of some critical reviews, and the need to go back to a piece of writing they thought was finished, not once, but multiple times in order to shape it into what may feel like someone else’s work (Braine, this volume; Kubota, this volume).

In composition and rhetoric studies and in education, the call has gone out by a number of people for more transparency in writing processes, identities, and agendas in research and writing (e.g., Bishop, 1999; Bridwell-Bowles, 1995; Burdell & Swadener, 1999; Geisler, 1992, 1994; Kirsch & Ritchie, 1995). In multicultural studies and second language education, authors are beginning to reveal their own previously hidden writing processes and professional experiences as well (Belcher & Connor, 2001; Braine, 1999; Casanave, 2002; Casanave & Schecter, 1997; all the essays in this volume). These authors believe that greater transparency of the invisible facets of professional development in general and writing for publication in particular can ease the transition for novices into the practices of their academic communities. Having a look behind the scenes in writing for publication may not make the process of learning to participate in professional practices easier: As Lave and Wenger (1991; Wenger, 1998) remind us, learning takes place via participation, and there may be no way to shorten this process. The greater ease of transition comes about as novice writers come to understand and thus not summarily reject the lengthy social, political, and sociolinguistic processes that lie hidden behind the polished product that we finally see in print. By offering writers the views of editors as well as authors, we believe that the essays in this volume contribute to our agenda of making the processes of writing for publication more transparent than they typically are (Braine, this volume; Leki, this volume; McKay, this volume).

Identity and Voice

In writing for publication, authors construct identities for themselves, resulting in different “voices.” Their published writing creates a representation of self which then influences how they see themselves and how they are seen by others. We mention two important ways this happens that have been discussed in the literature on communities of practice and on writing and identity and then comment briefly on the notion of voice.

First, from Lave and Wenger (Lave, 1996, 1997; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) comes the idea that we become certain kinds of people as we learn to participate in a community’s practices. Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 53) phrased it as follows:

Learning…implies becoming able to be involved in new activities, to perform new tasks and functions, to master new understandings. Activities, tasks, functions, and understandings do not exist in isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning…. Learning thus implies becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations.

Referring to identity as a “negotiated experience” in which we “define who we are by the way we experience our selves through participation as well as by the ways we and others reify our selves” (Wenger, 1998, p. 149), Wenger is especially interested in how people change over time as they change their “trajectories”—where they have been and where they are going (p. 149).

In academic settings, not everyone participates in the same ways. Not everyone writes for publication, and some who do write do not necessarily write academic pieces. Who is Martha Clark Cummings (this volume), for example—an academic or a fiction writer? She asserts she is both, and her essay reveals how her identity is constructed by different kinds of writing activities that take place nearly simultaneously within the same setting. In another example, the stereotypical identity clash persists between those who consider themselves primarily practitioners (teachers) or researchers (Morgan, this volume). No matter how false this dichotomy, it captures an identity dilemma that emerges from the kinds of activities these two broad groups of people are thought to engage in. The former group, the stereotype goes, teaches and the latter does research and writes. In learning to participate in an academic community through the activity of writing for publication, the stereotype breaks down, and people who ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction: Issues in Writing for Publication
• I Newcomers
• II Negotiating and Interacting
• III Identity Construction
• IV From the Periphery
• Author Biostatements
• Appendixes