* Call for Papers: Special Issue on Supporting and Understanding Access to Research Funding in Education, Educational Technology, and Open: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities

Special Issue: Call for Abstracts

OTESSA Journal Special Issue: Supporting and Understanding Access to Research Funding in Education, Educational Technology, and Open: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities

Co-Editors: Dr. Valerie Irvine & Dr. Michele Jacobsen

Interested authors are invited to submit a 500-word abstract proposal to Valerie Irvine and Michele Jacobsen (journal@otessa.org) by November 15, 2024. We strongly encourage submissions from authors who identify as belonging to structurally marginalized groups. Guidelines for submission are in the following section. 

Contributing authors for successful abstracts will be notified continuously until a soft deadline of December 15, 2024. Final papers of 4000 to 7000 words (including references) will be published continuously from earliest October 2024 through March 2025, though we can be flexible with dates with good communication.

Theme of Special Issue

Despite efforts to create more equitable and inclusive research environments or cultures of support across all the disciplines and types of research, tensions still exist between qualitative vs. quantitative or hard sciences vs. humanities or equity between privileged vs. marginalized researchers and students. A key theme across all these trespasses involves the concept of respect:

  • Respect that diverse disciplines of study on university campuses all contribute to society through their own unique discourse, theories, methods, culture, and approaches to knowledge engagement. Comparisons meant to pit one field of study against the other serves to deteriorate our collective understanding of the world and each other. Assumptions that specialized domains can be picked up through a quick database search vs. several years and multiple degrees of immersive and expert study risks undermining decades of knowledge development and is also a waste of time and resources.

  • Respect that the social sciences and humanities are equally important to the natural sciences or medical sciences and should be allocated equitable funding. We know that many of the complex issues that are impacting the world today may ultimately be based on science-based phenomenon (such as the increase of the world’s temperature globally), but how we make changes to such crises is primarily a very human one that is based on individual decision-making or cultural trends or expression, which are in the social sciences or humanities.

  • Respect that researchers come from diverse backgrounds and may require different approaches to support or evaluation criteria in competitions to be inclusive. This may involve a researcher who experiences the world with a larger obstacles or heavier burdens, such as parents or other types of caregivers, those who experience financial obstacles and may have to work part-time through studies or take their graduate studies part-time, thus making them ineligible for scholarships or reducing their volume of output and, thus, competitiveness, those who experience cultural barriers, such as Indigenous or black researchers, those who are a person with a disability, a disabled person, or a person with a chronic health condition. When those who are abled, privileged, focus on positivist methods from the hard sciences experience a different pathway to research funding support, those reinforced mechanisms become centred in systems, stereotypes, and ultimately change the nature of the understanding of the world around us.

  • Respect that knowledge is generated through diverse approaches to research, and that methodologies exist along a continuum of practice. We had hoped that the qualitative vs. quantitative debate was over and we evolved to a better understanding that the types of research questions influence the types of methods used, along with the high value placed on mixed methods and the multiple ways these types of data could be brought together in a way that elevates the overall research. If we continue to perpetuate the value, and funding and publishing, of one type of research over another, we are skewing our understanding of the phenomenon being examined and exposing it more to one type of limitation over another.

  • Respect that integrity and fairness must be valued over systems and structures. The rules and processes that occur on a campus were created by individuals and likely edited by later individuals. Contexts change, the world changes, our ability to view these structures as malleable before needs for equity, social justice, and pursuit of excellence.

The field of education and the disciplines of educational technology and open education both have unique experiences in navigating the five barriers to Respect. We encourage authors who are a part of the field of education or any of its sub-disciplines (educational technology, art education, Indigenous education, science education, educational psychology, etc.) to submit proposals to this special issue. Given that we are a journal in educational technology and open education and scholarship does not negate that we share similar barriers to our counterparts in the field of education. We welcome any submissions that push the aforementioned boundaries further. Perhaps there are other barriers and biases about Respect beyond the five mentioned above. Perhaps there are papers to be written about inequity that skirts outside of our field of education and are more centred at the social sciences and humanities level. We welcome all submissions that wish to examine the system we have for supporting and funding research.

Abstract and Manuscript Information

Once the paper is accepted, the paper must follow all submission guidelines posted for the OTESSA Journal. This includes an abstract in both English and French is required as well as a list of keywords in both languages. The abstract should summarize the topic, purpose of the paper, type of paper (discourse, research, or practice as outlined on the OTESSA Journal submission guidelines), approach or procedures employed, the findings or recommendations reached. Articles published by the OTESSA Journal will be given a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) License.