[Xmca-l] Re: Volunteer Mentoring and XMCA

[Helena Worthen]

MIke, let me give it a try. Joe and I are currently in Vietnam teaching labor studies courses to students at Ton Duc Thang University, a technical school supported by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor, the union here. Our students are first generation students. There is big pressure for the faculty to do research and publish. Desperation, in fact. But this is what we're in the middle of. So pass it along.

Helena

PS I've been keeping a blog on this and would enjoy comments. A lot of it is about the education system here, although there's some tourist stuff.
 
Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com



On Nov 10, 2015, at 8:01 AM, mike cole wrote:

> 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