Editorial
Meanings Emerging in Practice (Part 1)
Patrick Alan Danaher
Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba QLD
Alison Mander
Faculty of Education and Centre for Research in Transformative Pedagogies, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
John McMaster
Faculty of Education and Centre for Research in Transformative Pedagogies, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
Shirley O’Neill
Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
Jeong-Bae Son
Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
PP: 1 - 5
Article Text
This issue publishes the initial set of refereed papers from the first wave proceedings of the 3rd International Pedagogies and Learning Conference, held at the Springfield campus of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia on 27 and 28 September 2007. The first conference in the series (01-04 October 2003) explored the theme 'New Meanings for a New Millennium', while the second conference (18-20 September 2005) engaged with the proposition of 'Meanings under the Microscope'. This third conference took up this focus and shifted attention to 'meanings emerging in practice'.
The conference organisers, and the editors of these conference proceedings, consider this examination of the interface between the performance of practice and meaning-making potentially highly significant for understanding and enhancing pedagogies and learning in their myriad contexts and manifestations. In particular, this interface can be seen as the site where 'macro' meets 'micro', where 'theory' encounters 'practice' and doubtless where other binaries are enacted and subverted. From this perspective, practice is posited as the place where educational ideas can be tried out, where new strategies can be implemented and evaluated and taken-for-granted assumptions can be questioned. The meanings that emerge in and through and from this practice can then feed into new and more sustainable and even transformative instantiations and institutions of such practice.
35 papers were submitted for refereeing for the first wave proceedings, just over double the number submitted for the first wave of the previous conference. At the time of writing, a few papers are being finalised. Suffice to say that a rigorous process of anonymous peer review was applied to each paper, with approximately 25% of referees' reports recommending that the paper not be accepted for publication. The editors contend that this statistic is one useful indicator of the quality of the papers appearing in these proceedings, as well as a reflection of authors' and referees' commitment to enhancing the standard of scholarship in pedagogies and learning within an international arena. It is expected that the conference's second wave proceedings will be published in the first part of 2008.
This issue of the journal also marks the first issue published under the auspices of the Asia-Pacific Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (APACALL). One consequence of the introduction of the Australian Research Quality Framework - whose own quality and impact will hopefully be the subject of future examination - has been to render the position of journals such as this one at once more important and more precarious. The capacity building and empowerment that the editors wish as outcomes of the journal's operations must be juxtaposed with the largely hidden and unacknowledged work needed to make those operations possible, with resultant potential angst and stress. In that context, APACALL's invitation to the journal to make its home with such a hospitable and efficient organisation is both timely and welcome.
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