Editorial

In the last edition of Studies, I was very pleased to announce that in future the journal will be available online. Indeed, the last three years of the journal are now available. This edition gives me the opportunity to point to another innovation. For the first time, the work of the Editorial Board is to be augmented by an International Advisory Group (IAG), current members of which are listed. What is the reason for this change?

To date, the Editorial Board has seen itself as very much a working entity. Board members play an active role in policy development, as well as in refereeing and book reviewing. We meet face-to-face three times a year and the policy has been three strikes and you are out. In other words, if you miss three meetings in a row, you are deemed to have resigned from the Board. In many ways, this has circumscribed membership. With the honourable exception of Stephen Brookfield, who attends one meeting a year, we have thought it untenable to ask colleagues from overseas to be Board members, while having an attendance requirement for Board meetings.

However, Studies has become an ever-increasingly international journal, in terms of both authorship and readership. We would not and could not claim to be global, but nonetheless, over the years, the journal has come to act as a focal point for a growing range of research and researchers interested in the education of adults. To reflect our international status, therefore, we have instituted an International Advisory Group, members of which have been invited on the basis of their existing support for Studies as authors, referees and book reviewers. The role of the IAG is to promote Studies and to encourage contributions to it. In addition, members will be asked to fill out an annual survey evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a particular volume of the journal. This survey will feed into the policy discussions of the Editorial Board. Current membership of the IAG is for three years and we will be looking to augment membership over time. I would like personally to welcome the colleagues who have joined the IAG and I know the Board is looking forward to working with you in the future.

All this innovation is taking place as I come to the start of my last year as Editor. In the last edition of Studies, I announced that we were seeking someone to replace me at the end of this year. As I write in early March, I am unable to say who the new Editor is, but the appointment of my successor will be made in April 2003. This is probably not before time. Editors, like other things, have a shelf life...

Regular readers of Studies will know that I comment at times on the flow of articles. The last 12 months have witnessed a high number of rejections by referees. I take no pleasure in this aspect of being an Editor, but it is inherent in trying to ensure the credibility of Studies as a journal of research scholarship. At the back of Studies in our Notes to Contributors, we give a number of pointers that authors need to address prior to submission. In previous Editorials I have commented on some of the common reasons for articles being rejected. Those reasons have not changed substantially.

Articles are rejected because they:

1. are insufficiently located in relevant literature;
2. make claims which are unsubstantiated by evidence or logical argument;
3. provide inadequate methodology or methods, where relevant, to assess the credibility of claims;
4. are poorly written and referenced; or
5. are overly descriptive.

Most telling of all, authors do not seem to have read previous copies of Studies and therefore do not reflect on pre-existing conversations and debates. The Editorial Board is keen to ensure the quality of what we do publish and, even here, we are not always happy as there are degrees of acceptance in being published. However, we do urge potential authors to be aware of these pitfalls. The imperative to publish is a strong one and we do see articles rejected by Studies appearing elsewhere. This may be perfectly justifiable, but it also points to the variability in mission among journals. Our mission is clearly one of publishing high quality, theoretically sound and, where possible, innovative work. We do not always succeed, but it is in the striving that we make improvements, however small and circumscribed they may be. We seek therefore to extend ourselves in what we publish.

Studies has not been afraid to be innovative. In the areas of research and scholarship upon which we focus, the theories upon which people have drawn and the forms of representation that are used, we encourage disciplined and well-thought out innovation. Thus it is that work on literacy and academic literacies has become more prominent in recent years, usually drawing theoretically on the New Literacy Studies, which locates literacy as a social practice imbued with power. A further example of this is provided in this edition of Studies by Mary-Jane Curry. Drawing on a small-scale study in a North American college, Curry examines the limitations of a skills-based approach to literacy education with adults. The extent to which this is due to the limitations in the particular case, such as lack of staff training, and/or the skills-based approach per se, is a key question for readers to consider.

Similarly, over the years, the workplace as a site for learning has been reshaped in a lot of the research literature. For some branches of adult education, the workplace is the site of struggle and the purpose of education is to support the struggles of workers and their organisations. More to the fore in recent years has been the study of the workplace as a site for the development workers’ skills and capacities, work as such as a basis for learning and the exploration of the role of workplace learning in fashioning the identities of workers. The latter tend to focus on issues of culture and power. In the article by Margaret Somerville and Lena Abrahamsson, based on a study by Somerville of miners in Australia, we read of the centrality of certain forms of masculinity to the experience of learning about safety in mines and the embodiment of that in certain attitudes towards risk.

Mines are very particular types of workplaces in which masculinity might be said to be very visible, but in which gender can therefore be relatively invisible. What is made visible through research and scholarship in the education of adults and what remains invisible haunts our conversations. It is a point that has been long argued by feminist scholars, most iconically in the view that the personal is political. This lies at the heart of the narrative by Valerie-Lee Chapman, which asks us to extend ourselves on issues of content and form. Through postcolonial auto-ethnography, Chapman explores her own embodiment of learning, in which the mundane and the everyday – eating, defecating, and so on – are identified as powerful disciplining techniques, which, she argues, can be resisted through self-writing. Eating and defecating are not common topics in adult education discourse and Chapman points to the unsettled response she has had to using these topics to explore learning. Given the importance she gives to self-writing, it is perhaps not surprising that she adopts a personal/feminist style of narrative, interspersed with anecdote and pictures. This piece has not been uncontroversial in going through the refereeing process. Indeed we would welcome views on the publication of this piece – as we would on any others – as would Chapman herself, who views writing as a form of dialogue. I only hope defecation does not come back to haunt her and us.

Theoretically, there is a growing interest in adult education and education more broadly in the contribution that actor-network theory (ANT) can make to our understanding of the practices in which we are involved. Although developed in the study of technology and science as social practices in the 1980s, it seems only recently that its potential for educational research and scholarship has been identified. Drawing on Foucault and other poststructuralist writers, ANT is a form of relational materialism that attempts to explain phenomena through a deconstruction of binaries such as natureculture, subject-object and science-rhetoric. It offers an opportunity for a reflexive writing of the practices of research even as we construct our own narratives about research. The last edition of Studies saw Julia Clarke draw upon ANT for an analysis of literacy. In this edition, Richard Edwards pursues another line of inquiry informed by ANT, in which he argues that the intellectual technologies of lifelong learning can be positioned as part of the ordering practices associated with governing at a distance and technologies of the self through which different forms of subjectivity are fashioned. In its current form, the article is theoretical and exploratory, attempting to make connections with others who might have an interest. As such, it shares Chapman’s dialogic purpose.

(And yes, the Richard Edwards to whom I am referring is myself – the Editor writes about the author. This is something that requires some small explanation. Since becoming Editor, I have not submitted anything for publication to Studies, despite it being one of my ‘homes’ for my work. This has seemed right and proper. I have also found that frustrating at times, as some of my work has had to appear elsewhere when I would have liked it to be part of the conversations within Studies. As this is my last year as Editor, the Book Reviews Editor, John Field, suggested that I should permit myself to  submit something, in particular to add to the discussions regarding ANT to which I have been contributing in other journals. The published piece, duly refereed, is the outcome of that suggestion. I should thank John for making the suggestion, although, as Editor rather than author, I still feel the piece could be much improved. Next time perhaps!)

And finally, we extend ourselves in another direction, to research on study leave in Sweden. Sweden, along with the other Nordic states, has for long had an almost mythical reputation in the adult education community. One aspect of this is paid study leave for members of the workforce. In his article, Arthur Gould reflects on the nature and extent of study leave and attitudes towards it. This seems to point to its marginality in practice, although that should not detract from the significance it can have for those who do participate. His article also points to the relative invisibility of study leave as an adult education practice in Sweden, which is itself interesting for readers to contemplate in our own settings. What is visible and invisible?

What is truly visible in this edition of Studies is an excellent range of book reviews. The Board sees the reviews as a very important part of our work. With so much being published, it is difficult for even full-time academics to ‘keep up’. Indeed, most of us do not, or do so only selectively. An extensive reviews section helps in this way. We are always looking to extend the books we review and invite new people to review. If you wish to volunteer or see a particular text reviewed, please contact the Book Reviews

So, we have extended ourselves. Let us hope we have not over-extended the tolerance of our readership!