The new online Learner Development Journal was initiated to create an accessible forum for engaging with and writing about inclusive practitioner research. Here, we problematise the brokering of alternative writing practices and discuss the difficulties for editors, reviewers, and contributors in breaking with a third-party" academic paradigm."
By initiating a new online journal for the Learner Development Special Interest Group in Japan, we intended to create an accessible forum for engaging with and writing about inclusive practitioner research. Published annually, The Learner Development Journal (LDJ) is devoted to practitioner-driven research, reviews and interviews exploring learner development issues in language education. Each issue publishes work on a particular theme that the contributors of that issue explore together, under the leadership of the issue co-editors. In trying to break with the third-party academic paradigm, what kind of alternative writing about inclusive practitioner research does the LDJ aspire to publish? What brokering structures and processes does the LDJ provide to realize such writing? What are some of the more intractable puzzles and problems we have encountered in developing this new forum? Why? In this presentation we problematise the brokering of writing about inclusive practitioner research. We specifically consider why overall it has been hard to persuade ourselves, issue editors, reviewers, and contributors to experiment and to go beyond the bounds of conventional research and writing practices and to break with a "third-party" academic paradigm that distances, de-voices, and universalises teacher-researchers and their learners.
