Over the last couple of weeks, there has been some discussion online about the worth of peer review. Is it valuable, or is it antiquated? As an Assistant Professor who goes up for tenure next fall, allow me to contribute my two cents.
I guess the real question behind this whole publish or perish (which leads to peer review) comes back to the idea that if a university is going to grant tenure to a faculty member, they want to ensure that the faculty member is actively participating in their field and contributing meaningfully to the field’s body of knowledge.
Do we have a problem there? Not me, I’m good. I look forward to tenure and the security it affords me, so I can see it as a valuable right of passage for a faculty member.
The question behind publish or perish that I have a real problem with IS peer review. I agree with the questions that have been asked of late. Allow me to catch you up.
February 5, 2010 (my 41st birthday!): Cameron Neylon posts “Peer Review: What is it good for?” The basic premise of the article is that the process needs to be more open. Journals should publish which articles have been submitted as well as reviewer’s comments. He thinks reviewers should be held accountable for their part in the process so they aren’t purposely blocking others’ work. He also talks about the cost associated with rejecting an article. I found his take interesting. The transparency of the process isn’t the problem I have with it. I review articles for a couple of journals, and I always try to be fair. I think we ought to HELP each other share our ideas rather than try to prevent others.
February 17, 2010: Terry Anderson responds with “Journals as Filters and Active Agents.” His article talks about the peer review process from a journal editor’s perspective. It was actually very interesting. His main point: “So Peer review is certainly not perfect and does consume scholarly resources, but it serves to both filter and to improve the materials we use to build knowledge within our disciplines and (at least open access journals) to expose these ideas to everyone. Neylon’s ideas of just relying on happenstance and popularity ratings of posts, seem to be a recipe for compounding, rather than solving the challenges of utilizing relevant, interesting and important works.” Honestly, I can see that. We have to have some sort of bar to meet as far as quality goes. Not all research furthers the body of knowledge, and those of us who make this our profession should accept this. And, heaven forbid, if our work doesn’t do it, then we need to change topics!
February 17, 2010: Steven Downes chimes in with “On Peer Review.” First of all, I’ll say that I’m a big fan of Steven’s, and I appreciate his hard work compiling OLDaily and reading his Half an Hour blog. In his response to the peer review debate, Steven wrote: “I don’t think of knowledge and scholarship as static; I think of them as fluid, and therefore to me it seems counterintuitive to attempt to capture a paper and fix it as a definitive statement of fact (or knowledge, or findings, or however you want to represent it).” Further, he contrasts what he does with his blogging to publishing in academic journals, saying: “The difference between me, and an academic reviewer, is that I am held accountable for every harsh word, every appeal to an academic standard, every suggestion of a missing reference, every appeal to theoretical support. I can’t secretly lobby for a certain theory, undercut an opponent or competitor, bias the evidential basis for a proposition, or any of the many other things that can and do happen in peer review.“ Well, AMEN, brother!
I guess this really all started coming to mind for me a couple of years ago when two posts I wrote on this blog, Have we reclaimed Instructional Design and Instructional Design in Academia: Where theory and practice RARELY meet, were listed on OLDaily. I remember being pretty excited about it–especially because Steven didn’t completely rip on me! At any rate, I remember telling someone higher up than me here at the university about it, and the response I got was, “Well, it doesn’t help you towards tenure!” So here something I had written was going out to 26,000 + readers, and these posts still get heavy traffic on my blog, but because they weren’t in a refereed journal, they don’t matter.
As many know, my major professor was David Merrill, and he always told me that one of the reasons he wrote so much was to be part of the conversation. He said he didn’t mind writing something and having someone disagree, because he liked having to defend it. I think that blogging is just that–having to defend your thoughts and ideas. Now, I’m not in any way saying that blogging should be equivalent to refereed publications as far as tenure goes, but if something generates *real* conversation in some sort of quantifiable manner, then why not have some way to count it?
In his widely watched TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” Well, I agree with him. And that is the whole problem. The academic system rewards people who reuse data sets incessantly, others who run meaningless research studies, and others who just know how to get things published. And yet, as Downes mentions, they never have to defend a word of what they write. But I guess that’s the underlying problem with the whole academic system: it rewards those who know how to play the game.
And that, my friends, is why I believe that peer reviews and the whole publish and perish mentality are the plague of academia.
So let me have it . . .
]]>As far as this presidential election goes, let’s just say I’ve been completely underwhelmed by them all.
But Barack Obama said something in a speech to the American Federation of Teachers that is too much to let go by. He said (and this is a DIRECT quote):
“Real change is finally giving our kids everything they need to have a fighting chance in today’s world. That begins with recognizing that the single most important factor in determining a child’s achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from; it’s not who their parents are or how much money they have. It’s who their teacher is.”
Sorry, Mr. Obama, but you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.
Teachers aren’t going to be the ones to give our kids a fighting chance. On the contrary, it has to come from home. It has to come from the parents. Too many people in our country expect teachers to raise their children. And quite frankly, teachers have enough to do. Teachers need to cover content. They need to teach math and science. They should teach our children how to write well. But it is NOT their job to raise our children.
Now I know that as teachers sometimes we have to become involved, but in my experience, those times are few and far between. And when we do, it is to point the students to someone who is trained to help with whatever situation. These teachers aren’t trained psychologists and sociologists. They aren’t planned parenthood or drug counselors. They are content-area specialists (to a degree) who’ve had a few classes in teaching methodology. Yes, they care about their students, but they are about as equipped to help them as the cashier at Wal-mart.
For the record, I purposely wrote that last comment to sound harsh. You see, you can’t take a course in how to be a parent and give your kid a fighting chance in the world. The course doesn’t exist. But if it did, the syllabus would cover topics like “Quit worrying about what you want to do, and do what’s best for your kid”, “Get a job and stay employed”, “Quit playing softball or golf so much yourself and start coaching your kid’s team instead”, “Stay married”, “Hold your child responsible for their actions”, or “Don’t reward bad behavior.” Being a good parent is about making your kids what is most important, teaching them right from wrong, and holding them and you accountable for your own actions.
So Mr. Obama, if you think the way to give kids a fighting chance is to get better teachers, you’re wrong. It’s to have strong families, and to keep those families together. Unlike what you said, the single most determining factor in our child’s ability to achieve comes from within the walls of the home. In 1964, David O. Mckay said “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” The disintegration of the family unit is the problem, sir, and that has NOTHING to do with our teachers.
If you want to see more about what I think about families, go read the The Family: A Proclamation to the World. For the complete text of Senator Obama’s speech, go here.
]]>You know, this sounds really wierd coming from me. I love toys. I just don’t get this one.
Maybe it’s Apple backlash. You know what I mean? It just seems that Mac users are so evangelical about it. I hear them talking about how you can’t do on a PC what you can do on a Mac (and man, are those commercials hilarious!), but I haven’t found anything on my Mac (yes, I use one at work–I’m using it right now) that I can’t do on my PC. It just hasn’t happened for me.
So am I going to go out and have a fit over the iPhone? Nope. Besides, there’s no way my wife would okay that purchase . . .
]]>So I’m starting over.
Stay tuned for more later.
jhc
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