Dear Colleagues, 

I am sorry to break-in on postings........but
as you may be aware, papers for the next BERA
conference at the Institute of Education, University
of London (5th September to 8th September 2007) will
be subject to a refereeing process. 
This will be conducted by SIG members. 
Authors will be required to nominate the SIG that
should consider each paper.

In order to do this we need to identify members of the
SIG who would be willing to review abstracts, probably
around 10. 

I would really appreciate it if colleagues willing to
undertake this role could let me know of their
willingness by November 17th 2006. 

Based on last year’s submissions, I anticipate that
our SIG will need 8 reviewers.

Each review process would consider a 600 word abstract
in terms of its domain of enquiry; research questions
/ focus of enquiry; data collection methods or mapping
of literature; theoretical or analytical framework;
research findings or contribution to knowledge. 

The SIG would also give consideration to symposia,
(e.g. An international Symposium; a workshop based
symposium where colleagues can present their research
and receive supportive feedback) which would have to
show coherence between papers that would be
demonstrated in a separate 400 word abstract. 
Each symposium would have its component papers
reviewed by the same two reviewers.

The time scale for this is likely to be as follows: 

  •       Abstracts submitted 19th January 
  •       On-line abstract review from Fri 2nd Feb to
Mon 19th Feb 
  
In order to take part in this process it is essential
that you will be available during the February review
period and have the time to review approximately ten
600 word abstracts.

Once referees have been identified Carole Leathwood
and Ralf St.Clair of the BERA conference committee
will be in touch with more details regarding the
process. 

Thank you for your support, 

Best wishes


Brian E. Wakeman
SIG Convenor



Contact Details

If you have any questions, please contact Carole or
Ralf at:

[log in to unmask]
0141.330.3023




(Extracts from Refereeing information for BERA SIG
convenors)




Dear Colleagues,

The preparation for the peer review of the 2007
conference submissions is once more underway, and to
make it work as well as last year we need your
support. The main request we have of convenors is to
help us to find people willing, to act as referees
preferably SIG members.  

Last year your Practitioner Research SIG received 29
proposals and had 8 reviewers, meaning that each
reviewer had to look at around 7 papers. This year we
need around the same number of reviewers.



Procedure

The review process will involve going online to the
conference website, downloading the 600 word
proposals, reading them, and then assigning a score
from 1 to 5 on five criteria. The criteria are:

1. relevance of topic to BERA members
2. clarity of research questions and/or focus of
enquiry
3. appropriateness of research methods and/or
literature
4. robustness of analytical and/or theoretical
framework
5. significance for educational policy, practice or
theory

As with last year, each referee will be giving a score
out of a possible 25 points to each proposal, and the
two scores will be averaged. These scores will be used
by the conference committee to decide which proposals
will be accepted. The overall rate of acceptance in
2006 was just less than 90%, and we expect that it
will be similar this year. The enclosed table gives a
breakdown of accept rates by SIG.

Symposia will also have a 400 word abstract explaining
their rationale, and acceptance decisions will be
based on the average of the scores given to each of
the individual papers. All papers in a given
symposium, plus the rationale, will be reviewed by the
same two referees so that they can judge the merit of
the symposium as a whole.

The process will be managed by the conference
committee and In-Conference, and is designed to be as
transparent and easy as possible for those taking
part.

Timescale

Due to the relatively tight timescale, we would like
to have referees identified by the end of November.
BERA have suggested that interested people get back to
me by November 17th 2006. I will  pass on names and
contact details to Ralf ([log in to unmask]) in
the first instance (with cc to
[log in to unmask]) by November 24th.

Previous Reviewers

Last year we had the following reviewers on record for
our SIG:

Jane	Artess	
Christine	Bold	
Ann	Campbell	
Terry	Haydn	
Sandra	Hiett	
Carol	Marrow	
Margaret  McGinty Travers	
Y.Seymour	

Availability of Reviewers

People wishing to volunteer as reviewers need to be
available throughout the review period of February 2nd
to 19th 2007. We are hoping to have a relatively rapid
proposal review process, meaning that the referees
will have to complete the reviews over a two week
period.  The entire process is extremely
time-sensitive.







Brian E. Wakeman
Education adviser
Dunstable
Beds