RE: [xmca] Mentoring in research/writing Surprising Result So far

["David H Kirshner" <dkirsh@lsu.edu>]

David,

I'm not quite sure I get the context. In speaking of him/herself as the "orchestrator of these comments" and then referring to "the considerable annoyance that we as a group experienced," it seems this is a report on a collaborative review of your manuscript. Is that the way MCA works? If not, then your conclusion that the reviewer is presenting her/his perceptions of others' response to your general XMCA postings would seem inescapable. 

You've described reviewers' responses to your MCA submissions before. I found your prior comment on basic perceptions of sociocultural theory particularly challenging: 

"I also take it that the reviewers who respond this way have simply failed to take our journal seriously as a transdisciplinary venture and are writing from the confines of their own snug little home port" (Kellogg, June 12 2010, http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2010_06.dir/msg00053.html). 

It seems to me that many theorists have contented themselves with viewing Vygotsky's vision as incomplete or as bifurcated. For example, Wertsch (2007, 2008) illustrates this latter interpretation (I'm pretty sure these are exemplars, but am not at home and can't check my files). 

	Wertsch, J. V. (2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole, & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Vygotsky (pp. 178-192). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
	Wertsch, J. V. (2008). From social interaction to higher psychological processes: a clarification and application of Vygotsky’s theory. Human Development, 51, 66-79.

Your work seems to contradict this culture of interpretation by seeking to present a single, coherent rendering of Vygotsky's vision (of course, recognizing the evolution in his thinking). Whatever the relative merits of the scholarship, I find it discouraging that your agenda does not get recognized as the more challenging. 

David Kirshner


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 3:22 AM
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: Re: [xmca] Mentoring in research/writing Surprising Result So far

Jay:
 
Thanks for your kind comments, and above all thanks for the (very constructive) links. Yes, I know; being constructive takes a lot of time, and being reconstructive with language (as one must, sometimes!) takes even longer. But even for the busiest and most impatient reviewers, I still think there is a case for civility. 
 
This morning I got a long awaited review from MCA. The reviewer introduces himself (for I think we may be absolutely certain that we are dealing with a bloke) as a regular contributor to xmca from way back (from the days of xlchc, actually). 
 
There then follows a long justification of the recommendation "do not revise and do not resubmit". In conclusion, I get this:

"As the orchestrator of these comments, I should state that the tone of this review indicates the considerable annoyance that we as a group experienced regarding the author’s glib and flippant approach to serious scholarship. The tone of this review represents a response to the author’s own effort at positioning himself as wittily ingenious without doing the sort of serious scholarship that would lead readers to arrive at the same conclusion."
 
Now, how did the reviewer KNOW that I am wittily ingenious? Sorry, I mean, how did the reviewer know all about my glib and flippant approach to serious scholarship? I suppose that was the purpose of the long preamble: to let me know that this is not exactly a blind review.
 
Well, then--why do I only get ONE reviewer now? I used to get three, and usually at least one was reasonably blind. And civil.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education 

--- On Thu, 5/12/11, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:


From: Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Mentoring in research/writing Surprising Result So far
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 11:11 PM



David,

I really hope that MCA can be one of those journals whose reviewers are helpful. As a former and sometime co-editor of two other journals, I know how hard it is to get good reviewers (and those who provide constructive critique are the ones I'd call good). The review system is being overloaded by the growth of new journals and the many other demands on senior researchers' time (getting funding, supervising ever more grad students, etc.) mostly due to government policies of starving universities, controlling the directions of research, or making "productivity" some sort of quantitative measure in an "industry" that can only be socially useful to the extent it is driven by quality.

I don't much like to review any more. It takes a lot of time, and it feels like an imposition, an exploitation. So many journals, so many manuscripts, so many publishing houses that find academic journals to be cash cows when libraries subscribe at absurd prices. I could spend ALL my time reviewing manuscripts, grant proposals, dissertations, book proposals (the only ones for which you get paid a little), books, and the CVs of people seeking promotions and hiring. In the present system there are very few of "us", and a whole lot of "you". And the ratio does not seem to be getting better; I think it's getting worse, though I'd be interested to see some figures on this.

Some people are thinking about how to change the system. Look into workedexamples.org and workingexamples.org . There is some interest in a kind of peer-to-peer community model vs. the traditional few-to-many model. Not clear if it can work. Mike's proposal here for a mentoring community is another approach, and in fact most major research universities try to see that new junior faculty are mentored by senior faculty (one more new time commitment). If you're not in such a university, or not in the right kind of academic status, this option isn't available.

Granted that the norms of academic genres of writing for publication are pretty narrow, field by field, it's still somewhat scandalous that almost no PhD programs actually teach prospective researchers and future academics how to write to these norms. I know teaching writing is very difficult, but there ought to at least be an effort! Universities spend vast sums trying to teach writing to undergrads (somewhat hopelessly insofar as there is no such thing as "writing", just writing specific genres, all different), but nothing on teaching writing to the grad students who are actually going to have to DO some serious writing to have a career.

And it's not just writing, it's all the in's and out's of academic life in each discipline. I did help start a new PhD program once, and I did include two one-semester credit courses (only 1 credit, because learning to be an academic is not considered to be academically worthy of full course credit) of this sort. Some PhD programs I have taught in have had some no-credit, occasionally required, courses along these lines, but fairly haphazard, not taken very seriously by the faculty, or the students. None of them, even mine, got seriously into writing, because that's too much work for a low-credit course (on both sides).

I can assure you, and everyone, that you're not alone in feeling badly served by the peer-review system (a misnomer! definitely not peer-based!). When I was a new scholar, I had some horrible reviews, and a lot of my initial career was based on a few lucky breaks and some support from a few senior scholars. Not unlike a career in show business!

Will good ideas eventually get recognized? not unless they are presented in ways that meet some basic expectations on the part of busy, not to mention ossified, readers. Better reviewing is much to be desired, but it's not enough to make up for the failure of graduate education to meet one of its most basic responsibilities.

JAY.

PS. Please feel free to to forward this to your department chair or dean!

Jay Lemke
Senior Research Scientist
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California - San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0506

Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
School of Education
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Professor Emeritus
City University of New York







On May 5, 2011, at 5:05 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

> Mike:
>  
> Yes, I guess I need help learning how to write again, so I will certainly send my name into Tamara Powell as a mentee. However, I really feel that ONE reason this is happening (putting unnecessary pressure on senior scholars and some minor humiliation on us juniors) is a dereliction of duty on the part of reviewers. 
>  
> I'm no longer sure that the new system of submitting abstracts for approval for MCA special issues makes things better, and it may make the situation worse. It used to be that I could get VERY useful feedback from reviewers. True, MCA reviewers tended to be curt and unhelpful, but there were lots of other journals who were more forthcoming. The assumption was that if the editor-in-chief handed the article on to reviewers, it was because there was something there that was worth publishing, and a good reviewer spent time and effort trying to get it out.
>  
> With the new system, I can get rejections just on the basis of my abstracts. This does save a lot of time (YEARS, actually, because I used to spend three or four years pushing articles back and forth only to have them end up in the bin after all). .But it doesn't actually help me get the research done, much less get it written up. So I guess the new mentoring system really is an necessary adjunct to the higher wall being built around MCA. 
>  
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>  
>  
> 
> --- On Thu, 5/5/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> Subject: [xmca] Mentoring in research/writing Surprising Result So far
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, May 5, 2011, 4:42 PM
> 
> 
> Hi All--
> 
> This is an interim report on the suggestion to set up a XMCA mentoring
> network to connect junior and senior scholars.  I thought when I made the
> suggestion that there was a general need, but that may be incorrect. Only a
> half dozen juniors (about a dozen seniors) signed on.
> 
> The idea was to provide some help in response to the current economic and
> career path that are quite properly bothering people.  We will of course
> follow through on this small scale, but if more juniors would like to have
> some mentoring on their work now is the time to say so!!
> 
> 
> If you are interested and have not yet contacted us, please reply to Tamara
> Powell at tjpowell@ucsd.edu with the following information:
> 
> 1) full name
> 2) if you would like to participate as a mentor or mentee
> 3) scholarly interests/areas of expertise
> 4) your mentoring strengths or mentorship needs
> 
> Last call.
> mike
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