Well it seems I need to update my whiteboard because the discussion piece that I wrote with Trixie James has officially, as of yesterday, been accepted. That is my 4th publication and my 2nd journal article so I am still rather excited. Yesterday was a day filled with good news.

I had a conversation with George Lambrinidis who is a very experienced enabling educator and he paid me a giant compliment. He told me I should be more confident in what I know and my abilities then went on to say that I was a leader and if I wasn’t already a leader in my field that it was just a matter of time. I think the reality is that he sees my ambition, drive, passion, motivation and enthusiasm and equates that to leadership. I guess it depends on your point of view if they are good leadship qualities or not. I’m not sure I see myself as a leader and I’m certainly not at the top of my field. However I do have some leadership qualities and I hope to be at the top someday. I am good at motivating people, at seeing multiple perspectives, critical thinking and questioning is a strength of mine. I’m also highly organised and I do procrastinate but I do it in a really productive way. Anyway, the jury is out on that leadership comment BUT it is still a huge compliment.

In other good news my 0.5 contract at CQU is going to become 0.7 for 14 weeks. The bank account is especially happy but it also shows the need for a higher fraction and once the precident is there I will have more chance of it becomming permanent. At this stage it is all Academic Learning Centre (ALC) work and I would prefer if it was more enabling but it is still postive.

Now I told myself I would write a more detailed post about each research project that I am invovled in and here is the first one! I was going to start at the beginning of the whiteboard but it seems a better idea to start with the Sense of Belonging (SoB – tee hee) article that has just been accepted.

Originally I began writing it with Pam Williams who has many years experience in enabling education but not many publications. We had multiple meetings and discussions but when it came down to it I had written around 3000 words and she had done a few sentences. She had a few serious health concerns that were impacting her work significantly.

The original idea was an argument about self-efficacy and the student-educator relationship. I had observed that most of the literature talked about mastery experiences as being the most significant way to improve self-efficacy but I think modelling and vicarious experiences are just as important, at least in enabling education where a good mentor can make all the difference. It was always going to be a discussion piece but originally it was just self-efficacy and the student-educator relationship. At around the 3000 word point of the draft there was a call for papers in a Special Issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning which had the theme of SoB. So Pam and I discussed it and decided it would not be too difficult to swing the focus and include SoB as a framework for the argument.

We put in the abstract and it was accepted so then we had a due date in January 2022 for the full article (it was around August). By November Pam had pulled out of the project and I think at that point she had officially requested retirement. In December I had an ALMOST complete draft but was searching for a co-author because the argument simply wasn’t as clear as I would like it to be. That’s unusual for me, usually clarity and structure are not my problems in writing, usually it’s just knowing what to chop and what to keep. Another FedUni friend of mine offered to step in but that didn’t turn out very well at all. For three weeks in December they assured me they would swoop in and edit the article into shape. They never did. They did however take an extended leave of absence due to family/personal issues. So that’s two co-authors down! Third time’s the charm?

Well obviously yes, third time was the charm because Trixie James from CQU stepped in. A couple of times I was worried because she would go for days without working on the article… but then she would put in a big chunk of time and do a heap of work on it. That’s not usually how I work and it was an adjustment for me, but all smooth really. Trixie was totally the Super Woman swooping in to save the day. She did add some references to Bourdieu which I would not have done because I thought it overcomplicated things but the journal must have liked it because it was accepted!

We got the article in on time, with a rather stressful couple of weeks leading up to the January due date, but we got there! We got it back with major revisions. We addressed those in a table. As usual there was one very helpful and constructive reviewer and one that I think just didn’t quite get it. There was multiple things but one comment sticks in my mind. We made the argument that even a pre-recorded lecture can be used to build up a sense of belonging because the student gets to see the lecturer as a person. The lecturer is not getting to know the students, but they are getting to know the lecturer. I think the second reviewer just didn’t understand the point at all because they thought it was outrageously incorrect/impossible. It was a little frustrating because if we had two reviewers like the first one we may have got more advice that was applicable and useful. Either way we addressed each concern and returned the article in a 4 week turn around. It wasn’t as stressful as the first deadline but there was some stress.

As usual waiting for the response was unpleasant. I have all the patience in the world if I am trying to teach someone something… zero if I am waiting to hear about an outcome, job interviews, publications etc. I dislike it a lot!

Anyway the journal is a Q2 ranking and I’m very happy with the eventual outcome even if it was an arduous journey. The journal homepage is here and I will surely update when the Special Issue actually comes out.