[Xmca-l] Volunteer Mentoring and XMCA

[mike cole]

Dear Colleagues- I come to you with a problem.

As journal editors, those of us engaged in the publication process of
producing MCA pretty often receive submissions that are simply sent to the
wrong place or are going about their research in a manner that will not be
understood or appreciated by the readership that has accumulated. My PhD
thesis on probability learning would if into this category, as well as
standard research using cause effect, experimental methods with no
consciousness of their difficulties.

But sometimes there are exceptions. They are very problematic in some way,
but are often from very junior people, just feeling their way. In those
cases, informally, we have all undertaken special efforts to provide extra
rounds of interaction before submission, or suggested other venues, and
helped the person find them.

The problem is, we are few in number, we cannot expect reviewers to take on
such a burden. They already do
a ton of work as it is. An education to read.

So what to do, and when to do it? I have no answer to the general problem.
But I do have a case of a young third world student who is badly in need of
long distance tutoring in order for her to convert the work she has done
into something publishable. This person is very junior and her English is
not wonderful, but she had done a conventional piece of work that she needs
to polish up a lot more than she is currently doing, or it is not
publishable.
In this case, the work has to be legible to standard psychology. The topic
is the relationship between diagnosed learning disabilities and violence
among youth who are living in violent circumstances. She lives in such
circumstances.

My life will not allow me to take on this case. But maybe someone out there
would be interested in such engagement.

If so, please write to me privately at
lchcmike@ucsd.edu

mike

-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch