South Africa needs an open-access education journal | Mark Horner
abernard102@gmail.com 2014-08-07
Summary:
"I REALLY BELIEVE that we need an open-access education journal in South Africa.
When talking to teachers I find, in general, that:
they don’t read journals and don’t have ready access to any research;
a few read some blogs of foreign educators, mostly in the USA;
the vast majority don’t write their own blogs; and
most aren’t part of a very active community of practice (or whatever the current name for this is, PLN etc.)
Blogging revisited (sort of)
I say sort of because I never actually finished my blog post about why I really think teachers should blog and I am still going to encourage as many as possible to start blogging. My motivations were simply that I had thought that by starting their own blogs they could:
reflect on their practice;
share it with others; and
benefit from feedback which will hopefully lead to a real community of practice.
This hasn’t, yet, been very successful. Firstly, everyone is a little nervous about having a go at a blog, it feels like you’re opening yourself up to a world of criticism and you really need to have something insightful to say. Those are actually minor issues, getting the world to read your blog is very difficult and your posts have to be useful to you not necessarily the entire world.
The primary issues I see for those that are keen to start is actually finding the time to start and produce enough articles regularly to build up a community of readers so that the feedback positively reinforces blogging. A bit of a catch-22 situation ..."