The Paradox of Peer Review: Admitting too Much or Allowing too Little?

Peer review – the means by which one's equals assess the quality of one's scholarly work – has been used to determine academic merit for more than three centuries. Although the results of academic peer reviews are frequently challenged, peer review continues to be a commonplace of academic life. In the present scholarship climate, challenges to peer review come primarily from two sides. On one side there are those who believe that high academic standards are not being upheld by peer review panels, thus admitting weak proposals, people, programs, and articles. On the other side there are those who believe that review panels uphold conventional standards, thus disqualifying innovative projects and worthy people with diverse perspectives. In this article, I take up these two challenges. Together, they reveal a paradox of the current system of peer review: Both sides are right. And, the paradox has led to increased fragmentation within the field of educational research. Yet, despite the limitations of peer review, no viable alternatives exist. Thus, I will argue that the best we can do is to re-consider what we mean by merit in educational research, and to train new educational researchers in ways that expand their ability to judge merit broadly.     

The dynamics of life stressors and depressive symptoms in early adolescence: a test of six theoretical models

Structural equation modeling was used to compare 6 competing theoretically based psychosocial models of the longitudinal association between life stressors and depressive symptoms in a sample of early adolescents ( N = 907; 40% Hispanic, 32% Black, and 19% White; mean age at Time 1 = 11.4 years). Only two models fit the data, both of which included paths modeling the effect of depressive symptoms on stressors recall: The mood-congruent cognitive bias model included only depressive symptoms to life stressors paths (DS→S), whereas the fully transactional model included paths representing both the DS→S and stressors to depressive symptoms (S→DS) effects. Social causation models and the stress generation model did not fit the data. Findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for mood-congruent cognitive bias in stressors–depressive symptoms investigations.     

Nurse managers’ perceptions of barriers to the mentoring of early career nurses

ABSTRACT

Mentoring is a unique educative workplace relationship which holds the potential to support the skill, knowledge, social and emotional needs of both new and experienced staff members. As promotion of mentoring in the nursing workplace can improve workforce retention and cohesion, understanding of nurse managers’ perceptions of the barriers to the mentoring of early career researchers in hospitals can offer insights that enhance the efficacy of mentoring in these dynamic contexts. In-depth interviews with 20 nurse managers were conducted to identify these barriers, with interpersonal conflict, competing priorities for time and financial resources, and lack of training emerging as recurring themes raised by participants. We explore how these barriers can be mitigated to strengthen the contemporary mentoring quality and opportunity in acute care hospitals.     

Digital Scholarship Librarian: What Skills and Competences are Needed to be a Collaborative Librarian

Recently a partnership between digital humanities and digital libraries is being forged, coagulating in a demand for digital humanities centers within academic libraries and an increase in the call for “Digital Scholarship Librarians.” What skills and competences are necessary for librarians to fulfill this new role? and What training allows them to develop these skills? The paper examines the collaborative role of the digital scholarship librarian, what this new role entails and what it means to bring the two areas of practice together. After examining current literature and job applications surrounding this role, the skills needed to fill this role are identified in a case study of a digital humanities project which operated on the collaborative model with digital librarians, together making use of digital methods to answer questions specific to its field. The final section proposes a training agenda by matching current opportunities with the new skill which librarians interested in digital scholarship need to develop.     

Principles for the design of teaching

In this introductory article, after some initial discussion of an appropriate approach to mathematics as a curriculum subject, we sketch a theory for designing teaching, based on mathematical activity, situations, tasks, and interventions, exposing and resolving cognitive conflicts, changes of structure and context, feedback, reflection and review. We next review the main psychological principles underlying this theory, then consider some examples of teaching designs in the light of the theory. Thus we open the discussion of the theme of this issue, which continues with the fuller discussion of other examples in the remaining articles.