Blog#5 - Publication, Publication

Work - Publication and the freelance
One small downside of the freelance life (see Blog#4, Work) is that you do some (hopefully) decent work that doesn't see daylight. Except of course when the purpose of the work is to produce a publication (see Blog 3 under 'Work').

Paul Ashwin and Keith Trigwell suggest that you can't just do a piece of work and then, afterwards, write it up for publication (Ashwin, P. and K. Trigwell (2004). Investigating Staff and Educational Development. in Enhancing Staff and Educational Development. D. Baume and P. Kahn. London, RoutledgeFalmer.). Publication, they suggest, has to be part of the initial plan.

This isn't because work intended for publication is necessarily better, for example more scholarly, than work for a client. Any work should be scholarly - reflective, and as appropriate using ideas and evidence from the literature. Publishability is partly a function of the author's intent in doing the work. Work for a client is an example of what they call Level 2 investigation; intended to inform the client group, and generally verified, and also used, by the client group.

Publication of a Level 3 investigation, they suggest, is aimed at a wider group, and verified, through peer review, by and for that wider group. Which means that the investigation itself needs to be similarly widely aimed.

(For completeness: In their model, we undertake Level 1 work to inform our own practice / understanding; such work is verified mainly or wholly by the investigator and author. Although we may share it. Some blogging is maybe around Level 1.5 - mainly for the author, but shared with and open to test by others?)

I see two more ways a consultant can publish:

1. Review a lot of work done over a number of years and see what emerges that may be publishable - perhaps as a review article (e.g. Baume, D. (2008). A toolkit for evaluating educational development ventures. Educational Developments. 9: 1-7.).
2. As part of a development project, research may be done and tools and techniques developed that can be written up for publication - ideally, written with the client (e.g. Bates, I., D. Baume, et al. (Accepted for publication). "Focusing on student learning to guide the use of staff time." Innovations in Education and Teaching International.). This paper arose from the need to research and develop a workload model to underpin a major curriculum revision.

Are there other ways?


Life and Other Stuff - Photobooks
Last night we finished the next photobook, of the Norway holiday in June. I'll provide a link to it when it's accessible.

Making the photobook is fun - finding patterns, telling stories, and of course remembering the holiday. Only a few copies will be printed, but, it's a book! And it takes a lot less shelf- and table-room than the conventional photo album. Recommended.

Which package? We've used lulu.com for making books, but uploading one picture at a time makes it slow. With blurb.com you download the software, make the book a lot faster, and then upload it while you drink tea. Here's our India's Golden Triangle book from 2005.