Would you be interested in joining a Social Pedagogy Journal Club?
The London Branch of SPPA is looking for members to join a Social Pedagogy Journal Club. Think of a book club, but with journal articles instead. Journal clubs are well-established in the medical profession, and the Charted College of Teaching is introducing them for teachers. They are a way of encouraging professional development by giving a motivation to read an article, evaluation or report, reflect on it collectively, and plan and review implementation.
So far, a small group are planning to meet in Stratford, east London on a weekday evening. If you are interested, and could make this time, then let Janet Grauberg know on j.grauberg@googlemail.com. If you are interested, but the venue or timing doesn’t work, then let Janet know and we can see if we can set up more than one group. There is likely to be a small charge to cover the cost of hiring a meeting room and purchasing biscuits.
Background
Journal clubs are a model of professional development in which people meet up to discuss journal articles that address key issues of practice, then planning, implementing and evaluating changes to their practice based on these. A well-established model in the medical profession, there has been growing interest in their use in education over the past years. The September 2017 issue of Impact, the journal of the Chartered College of Teaching, included an article from Sims et al (2017) exploring how teacher journal clubs work in practice.
There are key features of journal clubs which tend to make them particularly effective, including meetings which are:
- Regular, ideally monthly
- Around 90 minutes per meeting
- At an appropriate time of the day
- No more than about ten people per group
- A peer facilitator to help the session
- An atmosphere of trust between participants
Articles used in journal clubs should also ideally be:
- Full peer-reviewed journal articles
- Recent review articles, not single studies
- Articles with practical implications for pedagogy
Useful resources
The website edujournalclubs.com has lots of useful hints and tips for setting up and running a journal club, as well as for finding and selecting articles. More information is at
https://impact.chartered.college/article/sims-teacher-journal-clubs-evidence-based-practice/