Tag: Halcomb-Smith

Posted on

Editorial: J-BILD and the Open Movement: A Grassroots Journal Pushes against Standardized Quality Metrics

Lauren Halcomb-Smith, Deakin University
Alison Crump, Marianopolis College
Mela Sarkar, McGill University

In this editorial, we share thoughts and commentary on how J-BILD fits within the complex and dynamic landscape of scholarly publishing. We begin with a focus on our stance on the use of particular research metrics, including acceptance rates and impact factors, before exploring how we position ourselves in relation to the Open Access movement.

We begin with some reflections from recent conversations with members of our academic community about research metrics, particularly impact factor and acceptance rates. As an editorial team, we have the pleasure of regularly participating in panel discussions about scholarly publishing at various academic conferences. We value these opportunities for open and transparent dialogue with the academic community, especially as the audience at these sessions is often largely represented by graduate students and early-career researchers for whom participation in scholarly publishing can be challenging. As such, many of the questions that we address during these sessions are about how to navigate this complex landscape. These are fascinating exchanges and highlight that the world of scholarly publishing is vast and varied. The question of where to publish, and how to get there, has many answers; it depends on what you want to say, how you want to say it, and who you want to say it to. There are also practical matters, such as how much a publication in a given journal counts on your CV. It is not only at conferences that we engage in this discussion. On occasion, we have had a J-BILD author write with a question about how we validate the quality of our journal using standardised bibliometrics, such as impact factor or acceptance rates.

These are learning moments for us in terms of how we communicate the positioning of our journal and the values we promote vis-a-vis scholarship and the production and communication of knowledge within a discourse community. We absolutely recognize that the world of academia is often defined and driven by pressures to publish in top-tiered journals. We also appreciate the pressures emerging scholars may be facing from their institutions and funding agencies, which are typically firmly rooted in the culture of quantitative bibliometrics as measures of quality and relevance. When we founded J-BILD, it was never our intention to join that particular stream of academia; rather, we intentionally positioned ourselves in critical response to the mainstream system of scholarly publishing. As such, J-BILD occupies a marginal space in the world of publishing. We are strong advocates for where we stand and what counts as scholarship in the production of knowledge. In the interest of openness and transparency, we feel it is time to be explicit with our authors and potential authors about what they can expect from us as a journal. Unlike many top-tier journals, we are a grassroots, community-operated, and volunteer-run journal. We do not have a business model nor a funding structure. We espouse a service model. We believe strongly in what we are doing. Our peer mentors and copy editors, who serve the journal and support our authors, do so because they believe in what we are doing as well. We do not have an impact factor and are not likely to go in that direction, nor do we track the acceptance rate of our manuscripts. We share concerns articulated elsewhere (e.g., Paulus et al, 2018) about the inappropriate use of bibliometrics, such as Journal Impact Factors (JIFs), to evaluate the quality of individual researchers’ work.

Acceptance rates refer to “the percentage share of formally submitted full manuscripts that end up being published in the journal in question” (Björk, 2019, p. 2). In other words, acceptance rates can signal to an author the likelihood that their manuscript will be accepted for publication in a given journal. While there is some correlation between lower acceptance rates in older and/or higher-ranking journals (Sugimoto et al (2013), it is inappropriate and problematic to assume a causal relationship between quality or prestige and acceptance rates. In other words, researchers should not assume that a journal with a lower acceptance rate is a higher quality or more prestigious journal, although some of the top-tier commercial journals may want us to do so; for example, Elsevier includes acceptance rate as one of its measures of impact (see: Biomaterials Journal Insights, Elsevier, 2023). However, drawing conclusions about a journal’s quality based on its acceptance rate is a problematic and inappropriate “proxy for perceived prestige and demand as compared to availability” (Metrics Toolkit, 2020). Acceptance rates vary drastically between disciplines, country affiliations of the editors, number of reviewers per article, and Open Access status (Sugimoto et al, 2013). To conflate acceptance rate with quality can be seen as a classic application of the scarcity principle of economics, which posits that the rarer or more difficult something is to attain, the more valuable it is perceived to be (Darity, 2022). In other words, people assume that because something is in short supply, it must be valuable. In fact, the scarcity principle is a key tool that can be leveraged to persuade consumers towards making certain choices (W.P. Carey News, 14 February, 2007). This is alarming when applied to the context of scholarly publishing because it further highlights how commercialised this space has become.

While we could estimate the percentage of manuscripts that are accepted each year for publication, the number itself would be meaningless or misunderstood, in isolation; each manuscript that we receive at J-BILD has its own unique journey. We provide feedback to all authors who submit a manuscript, regardless of how that journey unfolds. When we accept a manuscript for peer mentoring, our collaborative model of developing a piece for publishing, some manuscripts take more than a year to prepare for publication, while others get part way, and for various reasons, the process stops; other manuscripts may be ready for publication within six months or fewer. We have also published several special issues, which have altered how many manuscripts we can accept and publish in a given year. From an operational perspective, our editorial board has seen several leaves-of-absence, including three maternity leaves and a sabbatical, since starting the journal in 2017. For these reasons, we don’t set targets and each year is very different. We feel that it is important to recognize that, behind the journal website, is the work of humans in community with one another; we share this because our approach is driven by our commitment to transparency and openness. In fact, top-tiered journals could likely benefit from greater transparency, in terms of how they calculate acceptance and publication rates, and in other ways. Many of those journals remain behind expensive paywalls, which limits access.

The J-BILD model is different; we are open-source and Open Access. Open Access refers to journal articles that are free to read by anyone, rather than sitting behind paywalls that require institutional access, usually paid for by library subscriptions. There are several models to achieving Open Access; as a grassroots, not-for-profit, community-run journal, J-BILD’s approach fits best within the Diamond model of Open Access, which is free for both authors to publish in and free for readers to access (Open Access Australasia, 2021). Interested readers are encouraged to see the recent report entitled The OA Diamond Journals Study (Bosman et al, 2021) commissioned by cOAlition S, to better understand the role of Diamond Open Access journals in the academic publishing landscape.

These conversations about journal impact factors and acceptance rates are timely, with many of us in the scholarly publishing community looking ahead to International Open Access Week in October. This year’s theme is “Community over Commercialization,” intended to encourage “a candid conversation about which approaches to open scholarship prioritise the best interests of the public and the academic community—and which do not” (International Open Access Week, 2023). In reflecting on questions about our bibliometrics, especially within the context of the theme of the upcoming Open Access week, we encourage the academic community to recognize that Open Access publishing is part of a bigger philosophical movement; the Open movement traces its roots back as far as the advent of public education in the 17th century, with significant growth in the uptake and adoption of Open education practices since the 1970s (Zawacki-Richter et al, 2020). Open can be understood as an umbrella approach, informed by the core values of transparency, collaboration, access/participation, and co-creation.

Expanding our understanding of Open as more than free-to-read journal articles is essential in the current academic climate because the landscape of Open scholarly publishing is becoming increasingly commercialised by for-profit journals, who have cunningly aligned themselves with the Open Access movement. Commercial publishers have done this by shifting paywalls, which were previously paid by libraries in the form of subscriptions, to researchers, who pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) to make their research Open Access. At the same time, federal funding agencies are recognizing the social value of research that is openly shared, by adopting policies that mandate Open Access publishing for funded research. This places authors in a difficult position, whereby the cost of Open Access is pushed onto the individual researcher who is compelled by funding requirements to publish their work in an Open Access journal. When an individual APC can run into the thousands of dollars or Euros, there are significant issues related to who can participate in the commercially driven Open Access model. And academics are pushing back; recently, the entire editorial board of NeuroImage, a top-tier neuroscience journal published by industry giant Elsevier, resigned en masse in protest against the rising cost of APCs (Fazackerley, 2023), events which were expertly explored in a recent Guardian podcast (see: Bury, 2023). These issues of access and participation underscore significant contradictions between the core values of the Open movement and the way that the commercial publishing industry has positioned itself within the movement.

Our stance on journal impact factors reflects our broader commitment to the values of the Open movement as a journal and a scholarly community. When we founded J-BILD, we were motivated by a desire to increase access to and participation in scholarly publishing. Indeed, we have shared our stance on the problematic distribution of access and power within the current model of scholarly publishing in previous editorials as well as in published works of our own (Halcomb-Smith et al, 2020). It has always been our approach to consider the concept of Open more broadly than the financial, to also include the core values of the Open movement: transparency, collaboration, access and participation, and co-creation. These values have informed our operating model at every level, positioning J-BILD as something of a fringe journal, existing in the liminal spaces between Open Access and Open Education, between publishing and pedagogy (Halcomb-Smith et al, 2020). For us, Open and the values inherent to the Open movement have informed our decision to adopt a peer-mentorship model, which is not only Open in the sense of transparency, in that authors know who is reviewing their paper, but is also Open in a broader sense: collaborative, co-creative, and accessible. We look for opportunities to actively create a supportive community of scholars.

These are big conversations that are emerging and unfolding in real time. The landscape of scholarly communication is dynamic and shifting rapidly. We look forward to opportunities “to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems” (International Open Access Week, 2023), both during and beyond Open Access Week in October.

Article Summaries

Research Studies

We lead off this issue with Willa Black and Alexandra Krasova’s study, “The story of two female native and non-native TESOL instructors: A duoethnographic look at convergent and divergent language teacher Identities.” Willa and Alexandra use art-based research techniques to explore the similarities and differences between their experiences becoming second language teachers in the United States and Russia respectively. Central to their exploration is the much-debated concept of the “native speaker.” Though the two co-authors are at the same university in Pennsylvania and have much else in common both personally and professionally, the fact remains that Black is an American native English-speaking teacher (“NEST”) and Krasova a “NNEST” (Non-Native English Second Language Teacher) whose first language is Russian. This has coloured their professional identity formation and determined much about the way they have been perceived by their colleagues and students, despite their comparable training and qualifications. Drawing on the Language Teacher Identity research tradition and on their work with art-based pedagogy, Krasova and Black craft a series of duoethnographically-grounded conversations through which the reader experiences, as it were at first hand, the differing pressures on NESTs and NNESTs in the wider international world of ESL teaching. We are taken to Mexico, Spain, South Korea and the UK, as well as to the authors’ homelands, and made to feel the continuing power of the native/non-native binary, as well as the need to resist it; this study shows us one way of doing so. To expose discrimination by naming it is to begin to break it down.

The issue continues with a valuable contribution to the body of Canadian official-language research on language identity by Nicol Garzon and Elena Nicoladis in their research report, “When linguistic identity and language choice diverge: Francophone youth in a minority setting embrace their francophonie and still prefer to speak English.” In Canada, as many J-BILD readers will know, language choice is highly politicized where the two official languages, English and French, are concerned. Although the politics of language choice tend to be more intense and more confrontational in the French-majority province of Quebec, Garzon and Nicoladis show that in English-dominant Alberta, young people from French-speaking backgrounds have fully internalized the language politics so characteristic of Canadian Francophones. The authors draw on the Language Identity literature and on “L2 Motivational Self System” theory as developed by Dörnyei and colleagues (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009) in their study of a dozen Francophone-identified adolescents in the cities of Edmonton and St. Albert. In peer interviews and focus groups, these youth discussed their use of French and their sense of belonging to Alberta’s French-speaking community. Their families’ diverse origins (Africa, the Caribbean, and others) contrast strongly with the traditional Québécois de souche background envisioned by Canada’s language policymakers; they were nevertheless all fluent and comfortable in French at home and at school. However, all these young people admitted to speaking English far more often than French in their daily lives and indeed to being more proficient in Alberta’s majority language. Garzon and Nicoladis explore the complexities and contradictions inherent in the linguistic identities of their participants, making it clear that when language policy interacts with real-life language practice, language use in minority-language communities may be far more complicated and interesting than some theories might lead one to expect.

Continuing the theme of second language teacher identity and the way it develops across different contexts, Josée Le Bouthillier and Paula Kristmanson report on their study of French second language teacher identity in the officially-bilingual Canadian province of New Brunswick (NB) in “Teacher candidates of French as a second language and the construction of a professional identity.” French-English tensions in New Brunswick differ in both kind and in degree from the summering political undercurrents that inform linguistic interaction in neighbouring Quebec; they are nevertheless present, as Le Bouthillier and Kristmanson explain in their helpful introduction to the landscape of French second language (FSL) education in New Brunswick. This is the only province in which the demand for French Immersion (FI) education has grown rapidly in the last ten years (at a rate as high as 9.6%, as opposed to less than 1% across Canada in general). The demand for FSL teachers in both French Immersion and regular programs (in NB called Intensive French, or IF) far outstrips the supply. Administrative decisions at Ministry and school board level to allow FSL teacher candidates to enter their programs with lower levels of French at the point of entry have put concomitant pressure on New Brunswick universities to increase the ways in which they support pre-service teachers, not only in improving their FSL proficiency, but also in developing their professional identities as confident FSL teachers in their practicum classrooms. Through their analysis of focus group interviews with 13 teacher candidates at the University of New Brunswick, Le Bouthillier and Kristmanson demonstrate the feasibility of offering this kind of support on both fronts, and allow us to hear the teacher candidates’ voices as they reflect on their linguistic insecurities, their relationship to the native/non-native binary, and the ways in which they are working toward mature identities as FSL teachers in this particular Canadian context. Those interested in official-language bilingualism in Canada will perceive the wide applicability to other contexts, and to the teacher identity literature generally.

A very different kind of bilingualism/biculturalism is the focus of “Chinese Student Newcomers’ Transition to a Canadian Postsecondary EAP (English for Academic Purposes) Program: Bicultural Responses and Acculturation” by Chuanmei Lin and Cameron Smith. Drawing on Lin’s master’s thesis work and on her closely related collaboration with Sylvie Roy (Lin & Roy, 2019), the authors report on the adjustment and acculturation experiences of ten international students from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) course they were required to take before being allowed to embark on their regular program at the University of Calgary. Students from the PRC make up an increasing proportion of the total number of international students in Canada and face culturally specific challenges in their academic programs and in their daily lives as students. Lin’s insider status with respect to this population enabled her to draw her participants out in sensitive and insightful detail about their experiences integrating (or not) into the international graduate student community in which they found themselves after arriving in Canada. Some of these Chinese international students went to considerable length developing what Lin and Smith term “Canadian-dominant biculturalism,” in which the participants reported important processes of identity loss, transformation, and reclamation as they struggled to develop close contacts with Canadians and to acquire more idiomatic English. Others chose to remain in relative isolation, socializing mainly with other Chinese international students, although they of course did have to succeed in their university-mandated EAP program; they seem to have done so with less emotional involvement. Lin and Smith term this form of interaction with Canadian society “Chinese-dominant biculturalism,” and suggest that more attention be paid in future to the ways such students are prepared for their international experience before leaving home, as well as to the acculturation opportunities available to them in the host country after arrival.

In another research report drawing on the author’s master’s thesis work, this time at the Université de Québec à Rimouski, Samantha Van Geel takes us back to the realm of FSL teacher identity in “Les conceptions et les pratiques enseignantes inspirées du Cadre européen commun de référence d’enseignants de français langue seconde en Ontario.” As Van Geel points out, the theoretical complexity of the Cadre européen commun de référence (which we will refer to here by its English acronym, CEFR, for Common European Framework of Reference), as well as the sheer length and quantity of the documents generated around the CEFR to try to help second language teachers implement CEFR principles in their teaching, have largely prevented second language teachers in Canada from drawing on it in the manner intended by its creators twenty years ago. Van Geel set out to see what a sample of French second language (FSL) teachers in Ontario got out of the CEFR and how they used it in their teaching. The eight teachers who agreed to be interviewed all did so because they knew about the CEFR and said they had been using it for at least a year. Their professional interactions with the CEFR have been overwhelmingly positive; they use it to conceptualize, design, implement and evaluate their language teaching on many levels. The well-known evaluative component of the CEFR with its straightforward breakdown into “levels” (A1 through C2) seemed to be the easiest part of the CEFR for these teachers to relate to; some of them used only the levels, and only for evaluation. However, the many creative ways in which several of Van Geel’s teacher-participants took advantage of the vast array of CEFR-derived teaching tools and teaching concepts (such as, for example, the importance of using authentic materials in the classroom) leads Van Geel to conclude, along with the teachers, that much more effort should be given to putting teacher-friendly training sessions into place for second language teachers across Canada (and, I would venture to say, elsewhere where it is not well known). The recent publication of a supplemental volume (Council of Europe, 2020), intended to make the original CEFR document more accessible to teachers, and to lay readers generally, makes this conclusion, and this article, particularly timely.

Critical Literature Review

The critical literature review we feature in this issue, “Pluricultural perspectives on plurilingual identity: A critical intersectional literature review” by Rebecca Schmor, uses an innovative approach to extract a broad sample of 114 articles from the literature published on topics of plurilingual identity between 1995 and 2023. Schmor’s intent is to demonstrate the biases inherent in the way scholarly publishing works in this area (as, indeed, is ours in this editorial). By using a complex design to ensure that she reviewed articles across a range of languages (French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, as well as English), geographical regions, and, to the extent possible, gender and ethnic affiliation of authors, Schmor succeeds in showing that work by scholars in “peripheral” locations and/or non-dominant languages is underrepresented in the literature on plurilingualism and identity. Her close analysis of a subset of 18 of the articles reveals that the theoretical frameworks used to understand plurilingual identity—if indeed they were used at all—were wildly divergent across her sample. This section of Schmor’s review is particularly valuable, as it will direct readers to a wide international selection of research reports they would likely not come across otherwise. Schmor points out as well that researchers in non-mainstream contexts are less likely to receive adequate funding or to find a broad readership for their work. Through her “methodology of intersectionality,” Schmor amply substantiates her opening and closing statement that “a literature review is a political act.” We concur, and would encourage J-BILD readers and authors to undertake more work along these lines.

Research Proposal

Finally in this issue, Reshara Alviarez, in “Bridging the Divide: In pursuit of access to Language Friendly education in Trinidad and Tobago,” proposes a timely and important investigation into the interaction of official language policy with actual language use by children in the educational system of Trinidad and Tobago. In North America, many of us may think of these islands as being idyllic English-speaking vacation destinations. While (British) Standard English is indeed the official language of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as being the language needed for success in the local school system, the linguistic make-up of the islands is far more complex than policy documents would suggest. Alviarez takes us on a tour through the history and geography of Trinidadian Creole, which is English-based and well-documented (Winer, 2009); the local French-based Patois; and the recent, increasingly significant arrival of Spanish-speaking immigrant and refugee families from the nearby Venezuelan mainland. She proposes a plurilingual approach to the study of Early Years classrooms, in which she will document language use patterns and attitudes among educators and families alike. The need for a more “Language-Friendly” approach to education for the children of the islands, one that will allow them to bring their entire language repertoires into the classroom, is one that readers in many other places will recognize. The study Alviarez proposes will have value far outside its local Caribbean context.

References

Björk, B-C. (2018). Acceptance rates of scholarly peer-reviewed journals: a literature survey. El profesional de la información, 28(4), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2019.jul.07

Bosman, J., Frantsvåg, J., Kramer, B., Langlais, P-C., & Proudma, V. (2021). The OA Diamond Journals Study. Part 1: Findings. Science Europe, cOAlition S. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558704

cOAlition S. (2023). Plan S: Making full & immediate Open Access a reality. Retrieved June 14, 2023 from https://www.coalition-s.org

Darity, W. (2022). Alternatives to the scarcity principle. The Journal of Economic Education, 53(4), 340-347, DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2022.2111387

Dörnyei, Z. & Ushioda, E. (2009). Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. [electronic resource]. Multilingual Matters. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847691293

Bury, E. (Executive Producer). (2023, 17 May). Is it the beginning of the end for scientific publishing? [Audio podcast episode]. In Science Weekly. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2023/may/16/is-it-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-scientific-publishing-podcast

Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment—Companion volume. http://www.coe.int/lang-cefr

Elsevier. (2023). Biomaterials Journal Insights. Retrieved June 14, 2023, from https://journalinsights.elsevier.com/journals/0142-9612/acceptance_rate

Fazackerley, A. (2023, 7 May). ‘Too greedy’: mass walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-mass-walkout-at-global-science-journal-over-unethical-fees

Halcomb-Smith, L., Crump, A., & Sarkar, M. (2020). Publishing as pedagogy: Reflections on innovating in the ivory tower. In S. Palahicky (Ed.), Enhancing learning design for innovative teaching in higher education (pp. 57-82). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-2943-0.ch004

International Open Access Week. (2023). 2023 Theme: Community over commercialization. Retrieved 14 June, 2023, from https://www.openaccessweek.org/theme

Lin, C., & Roy, S. (2019). English learning lived experiences of Chinese student newcomers in a Canadian postsecondary EAP programme: The role of gender. The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6(2), 197-209.

Metrics Toolkit. (2020). Journal acceptance rate. Retrieved 14 June, 2023, from https://www.metrics-toolkit.org/metrics/journal_acceptance_rate/

Open Access Australasia. (2021). What are the different types of open access? Retrieved June 10, 2023. https://oaaustralasia.org/2021/05/25/what-are-the-different-types-of-open-access/

Paulus, F. M., Cruz, N., & Krach, S. (2018). The impact factor fallacy. Frontiers in psychology, 9(1487), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01487

Sugimoto, C., Larivière, V., Ni, C., & Cronin, B. (2013). Journal acceptance rates: A cross-disciplinary analysis of variability and relationships with journal measures. Journal of Informetrics, 7(4), 897-906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2013.08.007

Winer, L. (2009). Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago on historical principles. McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP.

Zawacki-Richter, O., Conrad, D., Bozkurt, A., Aydin, C. H., Bedenlier, S., Jung, I., Stöter, J., Veletsianos, G., Blaschke, L.M., Bond, M., Broens, A., Bruhn, E., Dolch, C., Kalz, M., Kerres, M., Kondakci, Y., Marin, V., Mayrberger, K., Müskens, W., … Xiao, J. (2020). Elements of Open Education: An Invitation to Future Research. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(3), 319–334. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v21i3.4659

2023 • Vol. 7(1) • 1 – 9 • ISSN 2561-7982 •

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Posted on

Editorial: A New Season of Quebec Language Policy

ALISON CRUMP, Marianopolis College
LAUREN HALCOMB-SMITH, Royal Roads University

Introduction

As J-BILD readers know, we are a journal interested in scholarship that advances and informs understandings of the complex interplay among the themes of belonging, identity, language, and diversity. We examine these interplays through the lenses of critical sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, meaning we are interested, for instance, in how individuals navigate, take on, and resist language identities and how power is wielded and challenged in different language policy contexts.

The recent sociopolitical developments in Quebec provide an excellent example of these issues of language, power, and belonging at play. We are referring to Bill 96, An Act Respecting French, the Official and Common Language of Quebec, presented by the Minister of Justice and French Language, Simon Jolin-Barrette (you can see the original Bill in English or French on the Quebec National Assembly website, here, though there have been a number of amendments, which are not yet posted online). The Bill states a primary goal of strengthening the current Charter of the French Language, or Bill 101, which has been in place since 1977. With a strong CAQ (Coalition Avenir Quebec) majority government behind Bill 96, it was voted into law on May 24, 2022, though not without strong criticisms from minority groups in Quebec.

A recently formed language rights taskforce provides an accessible and concise summary of key concerns with Bill 96, from the perspectives of linguistic and human rights (here), including: the right for the Office québécois de la langue francaise (OQLF) to enter, without warrant, any place other than a house, to ensure compliance with the law; the use of the notwithstanding clause to bypass elements of the Quebec Charter of Rights and the Canadian Charter, meaning that citizens will not have the recourse to fight the law; limits to enrolment in English cegeps (junior colleges in the Quebec higher education system), with additional French courses for all students in English cegeps, and the requirement for all non-Anglophone cegep students, including Indigenous students, to pass a standardised French exam before they can complete their degree.

In this editorial, we’d like to share some of the questions and concerns that Bill 96 raises for issues of belonging, identity, language, and diversity through the critical sociolinguistic lens of our journal. Before that, for the benefit of readers outside of Quebec, here is a necessarily oversimplified summary of both Bill 101 and Bill 96.

The Charter Of The French Language, Bill 101

Bill 101, or the Charter of the French Language, was adopted in 1977 and makes French the official language of Quebec. The objective of Bill 101 was to ensure French would be the common language of use in public domains. A key article that distinguished Bill 101 from previous language laws in Quebec was the end of freedom of choice in language of education for immigrants, or allophones. This put an end to immigrant anglicization (immigrant parents sending their children to English elementary and high schools), which was seen as a significant threat to the survival and vitality of the French language. Children defined in the law as historic anglophones (i.e., who have one parent who completed their education in English in Canada), however, have access to a Certificate of Eligibility, which gives them the right to be educated in the English system in Quebec. In Bill 96, historic anglophones carry certain rights to access education and public services in English that immigrants (including non-historic anglophones) and allophones do not share.

It is relevant that use of language in the private domain is not mentioned in Bill 101. Like its successor, Bill 96, is intended to confirm French as the common language of the public domain. In this sense, Bill 101 has been largely successful; French is well-established as the language of public and social life in Quebec (Bourhis, 2008). Yet, Census data that reports on home language are often cited as evidence of the threatened vitality of the French language in Quebec. According to the 2016 Census, 77.1% of the population indicated French as their mother tongue, a decrease of 1% since the 2011 Census, 7.5% indicated English as their mother tongue, a decrease of 0.2% since 2011, and 13.2% indicated Other as their mother tongue, an increase of 0.9% (Statistics Canada, 2017).

Indeed, the number of people in Quebec who use French as their primary language at home has declined. However, this alone does not tell the story of language demographics in Quebec, especially in Montreal. While Bill 101 has firmly established the use of French in the public domain, it has also increased the rate of bilingualism and multilingualism in Quebec, particularly in Montreal where most immigrants settle and most anglophones live. The rate of English-French bilingualism is continuing to grow, from 40.6% in 2006, to 42.6% in 2011, and 44.5% in 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2017). This speaks to the strength of individuals to navigate complex sociopolitical landscapes and make decisions to support linguistic capital for their families, while celebrating multilingualism. Bill 96 will likely lead to other social changes that are inconsistent with the goals of the policy.

An Act Respecting French, The Official And Common Language Of Quebec, Bill 96

Bill 96, like Bill 101, challenges the core themes of J-BILD, and you will likely find that the premise of the language bill is reductionist, based as it is on language identity categories (francophone, anglophone, allophone) that don’t fit many Quebecers, particularly in Montreal. Bill 96 also makes no exemptions or provisions for Indigenous communities, which will have consequences on their access to higher education. The identity categories that shape Quebec society in terms of rights, and which already carry significant weight under Bill 101, will carry more under Bill 96; they will determine who has what choices when it comes to higher education, whereas under Bill 101, this was restricted to elementary and high school. Effectively, Bill 96 greatly restricts the freedom of choice of language of education in higher education for allophones and francophones. A cap will be set on enrolment to English cegeps, not by the Minister of Education, but by the Minister of Justice and French Language, and three French courses will be added to students’ programs of study, in addition to the two that students in English cegeps already take, to prepare students (except historic anglophones) for a common French exit exam, the same one students in French cegeps must pass in order to complete their degrees.

There will be other sectors where language identity category will determine rights. While historic Anglophones will continue to have the right to health care and legal services in English (though judges are no longer required to be bilingual under Bill 96, meaning over time, we can imagine that fewer bilingual judges will be accessible, raising questions about how that right will be ensured), newcomers to Quebec will have the right to access health and public services in English for the first six months they are in Quebec, after which time they must be served first in French. How this will be monitored remains to be seen, but it is plausible to imagine an identification system.

In terms of monitoring the application of Bill 96, like Bill 101, this new language policy is complaints-based meaning that anyone who can submit a complaint related to a violation of the language policy to the OQLF (Office québécois de la langue française). Bill 96 goes further, however, as it gives the OQLF the judicial power to prosecute those who do not comply with the policy. As an example, a doctor could choose to provide services in English could be reported, and if a complaint is lodged with the OQLF, the OQLF would have the power to investigate the language of interaction between medical professionals, possibly putting patient confidentiality at risk.

Impacts of Bill 96 To Quebec Society In Terms Of BILD Themes

One of the key tenets of sociolinguistics that informs the scholarship we publish in J-BILD is that language shapes and is shaped by social interactions at all levels of society. The politics around language and language policy play a significant role allowing or disallowing belonging, or a recognition of and respect for diversity. When the rights and needs of one group, defined by language, supersede others, spaces for an equal sense of belonging in civic society are closed off, and it becomes more difficult to build mutual understanding needed for a multicultural society. The punitive approach of Bill 96 will likely push anglophone and allophone Quebecers and Indigenous peoples away from French. Rather than encouraging belonging, this law will exacerbate divisions in Quebec society. As we have seen in the Bill 101 era, these divisions may not follow exactly the vision of the policy writers. One of the unintended consequences of Bill 101 has been an increase in bilingualism and multilingualism in Montreal. If we project forward 5 or 10 years, it is possible that there will be a larger divide between an increasingly small, but elite class of strong bilinguals in Montreal who have been able to get into the restricted spots in English cegeps, and study in English, but with an enriched French component to their studies, and those who study in French cegeps, who will maintain their current two ESL classes, and miss out on the opportunity to develop as strong bilingualism. Allophones will more than likely continue to develop strong multilingualism, as the social capital that multilingualism affords them is not going to change under Bill 96.

We are hopeful that as we have seen with Bill 101, Quebecers will continue to find ways to express creativity with language (e.g., Lamarre’s 2014 study of bilingual winks; Sarkar’s 2009 study of language mixing in Montreal hip hop), resisting the reduction of their identities by the terms defined through this language policy. As sociolinguists, we have seen enough evidence that individuals will create spaces where they can be playful with language, embrace the richness of learning new languages, while celebrating and living, at home, in a multitude of languages and cultures.

Figure 1: Signs at a Bill 96 Protest March, May 15, 2022, downtown Montreal (photo credit: Alison Crump)

Article Summaries

Within the context of the current events explored in the paragraphs above, we are pleased to share with our readers four articles related to themes of belonging, identity, language, and diversity. We are proud to share the work of researchers from two different stages of the research cycle, including two critical literature reviews and two research studies. With the current events of Bill 96 passing in J-BILD’s home province, the issues of belonging, identity, language, and diversity as they relate to formal language policy were front of mind as we reviewed, peer-mentored, edited, and published these four articles. Each of them, in their own way, underscores the role that language diversity plays in individuals’ sense of belonging and their identity, factors which play a significant role in individual and collective wellbeing. Each article adds value to conversations about Bill 96, which must be ongoing as citizens of Quebec navigate this new season of language policy. We sincerely hope you enjoy the articles in this issue; we are immensely grateful to the authors for their act of service to the collective knowledge in sharing their learning with us, acknowledging the significant effort and work that goes into researching, writing, and publishing in academia.

Research Studies

“Identity construction of places through translanguaging in Jakarta: A linguistic landscape of Gambir train station” is co-authored by Anna Marietta Da Silva and Deny Arnos Kwary. In this article, Da Silva and Kwary report on research conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, related to the relationship between individuals and the public spaces they navigate as part of their day-to-day lives. Specifically, the authors explore what the language of written signage suggests about the identity of the location. Da Silva and Kwary provide a comprehensive review of the linguistic landscape literature and the socio/political/geographical context of Jakarta. Data included photographs of written signs taken in August 2017, which were categorised by language and qualitatively interpreted. The analysis indicates a high level of bilingualism and language mixing in the linguistic landscape of the Gambir train station. In addition, results show that most of the signage is related to infrastructure development and travel. Da Silva and Kwary argue that the linguistic landscape of this locale presents an identity of a social space for local and international travellers and non-travellers; rather than separate or siloed from the rest of the city, this train station’s linguistic landscape reflects what is seen in malls and urban centres. As evident from Da Silva and Kwary’s article, the languages visible in public spaces shape the identity of that space, which interplay with the identity of individuals navigating those spaces. As J-BILD managing editors, we appreciate the connections made in this article between linguistic landscape and how it can shape the belonging and identity of the individuals who navigate public spaces. There are clear links to our previous discussion on Quebec language policy in terms of how language policy affects the linguistic landscape and can affect the sense of belonging, identity, and diversity of language practices among individuals.

Darlene Rodriguez, Lina Tuschling, and Paul McDaniel are the co-authors of “‘Why do they have to laugh at me?’: Stereotypes and Prejudices Experienced by Immigrant Youth,” a research study that seeks to address the question of how immigrant youth encounter and adapt to new environments, specifically those that they did not choose themselves. The researchers used data from twenty-five essays, written by young people from immigrant backgrounds who settled in Atlanta, Georgia. The authors tested the contact hypothesis, as posited by Gordon Allport ([1954], 1979), which argues that inter-group contact reduces biases, prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination. The results of research confirm the contact hypothesis, especially when favourable social conditions are exigent, for example when a young person from an immigrant or refugee background joins a sports team with individuals from other backgrounds. The work of these authors adds another valued voice to the chorus of researchers and educators who have, through this journal, continuously underscored the complex interplay between belonging, identity, language, and diversity. Readers will appreciate the perspective this article brings to supporting meaningful integration of immigrants into new societies, including the richness of diversity that they bring to our schools, workplaces, and communities.

Critical Literature Reviews

Satinder Kaur and Jessica Szorenyi are the authors of “The Role of Educators in Supporting the Development of Refugee Students’ Sense of Belonging.” In this critical literature review, the authors explore the role of North American schools in the development of refugee students’ sense of belonging. Twenty-five peer-reviewed articles were included in the authors’ critical review of the literature. Through their thematic analysis, the authors identified four key themes in the literature related to the role of the school in supporting refugee belonging. The authors underscore the importance for developing and implementing professional development for teachers based on refugee-focused, trauma-informed pedagogy. The authors provide directions for future research, policy development, and curricular support for refugee students. This article will be an important read for those interested in learning more about how to effectively support refugee students in succeeding in the context of K-12 schooling in North America and beyond. Reflecting on this article in the context of this editorial, Bill 96 appears to miss the mark in terms of its duty of care for refugee students in Quebec schools; rather than supporting the socio- emotional well-being of refugee students and facilitating a sense of belonging and welcome in schools and the community, restrictive language policies like Bill 96 have the potential to make refugee students feel excluded. We look forward to further work from these authors and further research that explores the intersections between refugee student experiences and belonging, identity, language, and diversity.

“English Learning and Family Language Policy in China: A Critical Literature Review” is authored by Yue Ma. In this article, Ma explores Family Language Policy (FLP) as a framework for exploring how families in China overtly or covertly plan language use in the home. Ma provides a detailed and thorough overview of English language learning in China and situates FLP as relevant to the context. To this point, Ma locates the study within a field of research that is heavily dominated by studies about English language learning in and related to schools in China and identifies a gap in the research with respect to how families navigate overt and covert language planning within the home. Ma concludes with questions and directions for future research. This article will be of interest to anyone interested in or involved in understanding more about the relationships between formal language policy, family language practices, and bilingualism. We look forward to following the development of the field of FLP in China, as outlined by Ma in this article. As always, we would like to express our gratitude to the peer mentors and copy editors who volunteer their service and expertise in support of sharing critical voices in sociolinguistic scholarship.

References

Allport, G. ([1954], 1979). The nature of prejudice. Basics Books.

Bourhis, R.Y. (Ed.) (2008). The vitality of the English-speaking communities of Quebec: From community decline to revival. Montreal, Quebec: CEETUM, Université de Montréal.

Lamarre, P. (2014). Bilingual winks and bilingual wordplay in Montreal’s linguistic landscape. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (228), 131-151. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2014-0008

Sarkar, M. (2009). “Still reppin’ por mi gente”: the transformative power of language mixing in Quebec Hip-Hop. In H.S. Alim, A. Ibrahim & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip Hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language (pp. 139-157). Routledge.

Statistics Canada (2017). Census of Population, 2011 and 2016: Update of the 2016 Census language data. Available at https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/ref/lang/lang-note-eng.cfm

Posted on

Editorial 3(1): Behind the Scenes at J-BILD

ALISON CRUMP, Marianopolis College and McGill University

LAUREN HALCOMB-SMITH, Royal Roads College

MELA SARKAR, McGill University

The publication of this issue marks J-BILD’s third year in press and our fourth issue. Over the last several years we have been working out how to run a journal. What is our vision for the journal? Where do we fit within the landscape of scholarly publishing? Is it where we want to fit? How do we create our own space while staying true to the values and ideals of scholarship as “making knowledge together” (Paré, 2016)? What kind of work do editors, authors, peer mentors, copy-editors, and readers have to do together to make that space?

We have touched on these questions in previous editorials; in Volume 1(1), we focused on J-BILD’s guiding principles as an open-source, collaborative peer-mentoring journal, inclusive of all stages of the publication cycle. In Volume 2(1), we went further in describing our approach to open scholarship and collaborative peer review. In Volume 2(2), we made a case for publishing as an act of hope and defiance against intolerance. It is evident from our past editorials, as well as our published articles, that J-BILD is a journal that invites members of the scholarly community to revisit assumptions, both about the field of inquiry and about the nature of scholarly publishing. 

J-BILD represents a new model of academic publishing, in contrast to the traditional publishing house of yore. Picture academics (white men, mostly), hunched over oak desks, clouds of cigar smoke hanging in the air, the clink of ice cubes in a freshly poured tumbler of whisky. There are piles of papers precariously balanced everywhere. Young women rush back and forth with proofs needing editorial approval (by men— “Miss, take this and type it up for 4pm, would you?”) And the sound of the typewriter. Click clack. Click clack. Click. Ding! Busy women, averaging 90 words per minute. 

Professional women in 2019 are no less busy than their foremothers. But it’s a different kind of busy. The accident of history that has meant that J-BILD’s editorial team is made up of women has had the effect of making us reflect on ways in which academia may be changing. Women are no longer relegated to minor secretarial or other essentially menial functions in the world of intellectual work. Mothers who are professionals and scholars are no longer swimming against the current. 

For the three of us, our development in these domains—the personal, professional, and academic–has happened concurrently. Our graduate work coincided with the birth of our children, and so our scholarly work has always been interwoven with the dailiness of our lives. Ding! Another email comes in. Waah! The baby’s woken up. Reach for the (baby) bottle. We have perfected the art of nursing whilst editing articles, annotating bibliographies, and debunking outmoded theories. Since launching J-BILD in 2017, our senior editorial team has welcomed two babies and a fifth grandbaby, two career changes, one cross-country move, a wedding, and more. Rather than seek to keep these parts of our identities separate and siloed, we draw strength and inspiration from our family lives for our professional and scholarly work, and vice versa. There have been many J-BILD meetings that have taken place over Skype while one of us breastfeeds an infant or plays with a toddler or knits something special for a cherished grandchild. We fit in emails to our authors during lunch breaks at our day jobs, write editorials while babies nap, and review manuscripts while the dishwasher runs in the background after bedtime. 

If scholarship is making knowledge together, then the kind of knowledge we create together depends on the kinds of relationships we bring to and create through our scholarly work. J-BILD is built on a supportive, community-based model where members are not excluded from publishing based on certain norms of merit (title, academic experience, research output, etc.). J-BILD authors actively take part in a collaborative review process with a peer mentor—the process is transparent and includes authors in every phase of the publication process. The relationships that are built throughout this process are no less important than the product, i.e., the journal issue. We are encouraged that this model seems to be resonating with our authors and mentors. As one of our authors wrote to us recently: “[My peer mentor] has been an amazing support throughout this process. I keep telling my fellow graduate students that it is possible to have a positive review experience and am encouraging them to look into J-BILD! I sincerely hope this collaborative approach can be taken up by other journals, as it has been so helpful to me as a junior scholar.” 

This issue is perhaps the most representative of our lives behind the scenes of J-BILD. In January 2019, we received 11 submissions for this current issue. With our hands full of babies and older children, juggling mothering and careers and families, we found ourselves rushing to keep up with our own self-imposed tight timelines for the journal (i.e., moving from submission to publication in less than half a year). And by acting in haste, we found we were losing the sense of connection, the relationships with our authors, with our peer mentors, and even with each other. To foster the community-building that is at the heart of J-BILD, we needed to allow more time to mull, to ponder, to read, to write, to reflect, and to connect. In our opening paragraph above, we asked, how do we create our own space while staying true to the values and ideals of scholarship as “making knowledge together” (Paré, 2016)? The answer is: by slowing down and managing expectations—our own and others’. 

We have a number of manuscripts in process and look forward to publishing them in due time. For this issue, we are very pleased to present two articles that we judged were valuable contributions to perspectives on diversity in education in contemporary Canadian contexts. Each is from a different stage of the research cycle, namely, a critical literature review and a research study. 

Isabelle Côté is the author of “Regard croisé sur l’intégration des perspectives autochtones dans les recherches menées en français au Canada”, a critical literature review of research related to the integration of Indigenous perspectives into teacher education and K-12 programs in British Columbia. Through her discussion and interpretation of Canadian-based research, Côté reveals a number of challenges and successes found in integrating the perspectives of Indigenous people. 

“‘How am I supposed to teach them French when they can’t even speak English?’: Unpacking the myth of English proficiency as a prerequisite for French immersion” is a recent research study by Stephen Davis. In this article, Davis explores the beliefs of French immersion teachers about Allophones in French immersion in Saskatoon. He frames his study within the sociolinguistic landscape of Canada and Saskatchewan, highlighting the problematic nature of the Anglophone-Francophone binary within conversations around language and education, which essentially exclude citizens who speak a first language other than French or English. Davis presents and interprets the data generated through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with French immersion teachers to reveal how French immersion teachers perceive the suitability of French immersion for Allophone students in Saskatoon, as well as how these teachers perceive English proficiency as a determinant of success. Davis concludes with practical recommendations for school boards and a call for further research about Allophone learners in French immersion programs. 

REFERENCES

Paré, A. (2016, April 17). Making knowledge together: Voice, identity, agency, and communal effort [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/making-knowledge-together-voice-identity-agency-and-communal-effort-by-dr-anthony-pare

Posted on

Editorial 2(2): BILDing Optimism in Uncertain Times

Volume 2(2): 2018

ALISON CRUMP (Senior Managing Editor), Marianopolis College

LAUREN HALCOMB-SMITH (Managing Editor), Royal Roads University

MELA SARKAR (Senior Advisory), McGill University

Introduction

This issue, our third since we launched the journal, marks an important milestone: J-BILD has now had a first birthday. Even the longest-running and most highly-respected journals had once to make it past their first year. In Canada, applied linguists can reflect with pride on the continuing success of the Canadian Modern Language Review / Revue Canadienne des langues vivantes, which will celebrate its 75th year in 2019. The CMLR/RCLV began as a modest publication of the Ontario Modern Language Teachers’ Association in 1944, a year in which the fields of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics had yet to be mapped out; a year in which the fields most in the minds of our forebears were the battlefields of Europe and East Asia. In a similar vein, many readers will know that the Modern Language Journal, another top-ranked periodical for those of us interested in language learning/use, passed its centenary in 2016. We need not remind readers of the conflagration that was raging in 1916.

Launching a new scholarly journal several years into a terrible international conflict, the end or outcome of which could not with any certainty be foreseen, must have seemed dangerously optimistic to the point of foolhardiness in 1916 or 1944. Yet a few courageous scholars dared to do it. Now, as J-BILD moves into its second year, climate change is probably the gravest looming threat to the continued happiness and safety of not only our own species, but of all our co-inhabitants of the planet whether animal or vegetable. Right-wing governments dedicated, among other things, to the denial of this huge potential for global disaster are coming into power in one place after another.

Americans are emerging from midterm elections in the Trump presidency, an era in North American and global politics that, if we and the planet get past it, will be remembered as significant. A majority of Brazil’s 200-million-plus people recently made an extreme rightist their president. And in Quebec, where J-BILD got its start a year ago, a right-of-centre and relative newcomer to politics swept a new political party to power a few weeks ago. One of the planks in the new party’s platform was a promise to reduce immigration. A deep fear of the “Other” seems to be one of the main drivers of mainstream politics across national boundaries, and at the same time, more and more people are being forced to flee their homelands and cross those boundaries in search of a safe haven.

So, while the team of determined volunteers who launched J-BILD a year ago are blessedly spared the tribulations experienced by citizens of warring nations, we still, with our readers, confront serious challenges to our collective well-being. Not the least of them is the current backlash against diversity (the “D” of BILD), as insidious and in its own way as dangerous as the climate changes that are sweeping the world. A new journal that builds on the bedrock of diversity as an inherent value is, we think, worth supporting and persevering with as never before. Even supposedly innocuous Canadian pro-multiculturalist preaching, though on the surface opposed to the right-wing ideal of a safe homogeneity, conceals an inner denial of the everyday reality of diversity. At the federal level, people who identify as members of communities other than White Anglophone or White Francophone are lumped into cultural groups whose languages are not recognized, yet who are celebrated for the “diversity” they bring to the Canadian cultural mosaic—an intolerance-masking language of which scholars like Sara Ahmed (2007) are heavily critical. This kind of discourse locates diversity in the bodies of Others and insulates the invisible majority against any real engagement with difference. In her critique of institutional policies on diversity and equity, Ahmed argued, “you end up doing the document rather than doing the doing” needed for meaningful change.

Language, the “L” of BILD, is no less important; like critical sociolinguist Monica Heller (2007), we see language/s as socially distributed through historical, political, and economic processes that inform what resources are assigned what value, by whom, and with what consequences. The value thus assigned goes far beyond the purely linguistic. In our era, language is one of the most ubiquitous scapegoats for ancient enmities that have more to do with scarce resources among feuding families than with speech. Language is rooted in, while also helping to define, identity, the “I” of BILD. As Norton (2000) has pointed out, identity references the desire for recognition, affiliation, and security—all of them necessary for physical and psychological well-being. Affiliation, appartenance, belonging—the “B” of BILD—bring us back around to where we began, with the defense of diversity and an insistence upon inclusion. The “Other” is by definition the person who does not belong.

But we are all the Other. We can only belong by virtue of renouncing simplistic notions of belonging. The identity we may thus win through to transcends, while encompassing, the individual. We take our stand with Hugo of St-Victor, the 12th-century monk Edward Said was fond of quoting: “The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land” (Said, 2000, p. 185). Finding a contemporary idiom for truths that go back to medieval times and forward into an uncertain, but certainly diverse, future—there in a nutshell is one of the main leitmotifs of J-BILD.

In This Issue

We are thrilled to be able to share six research articles, four in English and two in French, which in different, but interrelated ways, examine intersections of the four pillars of J-BILD, and thus contribute important voices to BILDing optimism in these uncertain times.

Marie-Pier Bastien, author of “Pratiques de littératie familiales d’élèves hispanophone,” presents the results of a qualitative study exploring the family language practices of ten students enrolled in French schools in the Outaouais region for whom Spanish is the family language. Beginning with an exploration of the unique sociolinguistic context of the Outaouais region, Bastien presents and discusses the data generated through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Her analysis paints a rich picture of the family language practices of her participants and highlights the unique ways in which family language practices manifest among young people in multilingual environments. Bastien concludes with recommendations for supporting such students in their development as multilingual individuals.

Alison Crump’s article, “Thinning the classroom walls: Graduate student perspectives on blogging as pedagogy,” brings to light the views and experiences of graduate students a sociolinguistics and language education course in their use of blogging as a pedagogical tool. Crump presents and discusses data generated through focus groups and surveys to show how the use of blogging supported students in their learning through the cultivation of peer support, collaboration, self-reflection, and authenticity in the experience of writing for a “real” audience. Crump argues that open pedagogies, such a blogging, thin the classroom walls and create opportunities for publicly-engaged and networked scholarship.

Eun-ji Amy Kim, S. J. Adrienna Joyce, Annie Desjardins, and Yuwen Zhang’s article, “Speaking to our minds, hearts, and hands: A cogenerative inquiry on learning through an interdisciplinary land-based course,” reflect on their settler/visitor learning/teaching experiences in a land-based, interdisciplinary Indigenous field course in Kahnawá:ke. Their article takes the form of a metalogue, a method for engaging in dialogues both with theories and self-reflexivity and draws out the diversity of the co-authors’ different learning paths. Common throughout the article, is an emphasis on building relationships based on collaboration; indeed, the authors argue, this is the real work of achieving the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Accord on Indigenous Education. Kim and company bring their metalogue to a close with a series of recommendations for universities, instructors, and students for future land-based interdisciplinary courses.

In “Reframing FSL teacher learning: Small stories of (re)professionalization and identity formation,” Mimi Masson presents the results of a case study of two French as a second language (FSL) teachers and the factors that informed their professional identity. Through the analysis and discussion of narrative data, Masson argues that participants’ successful identity-formation was closely linked to their feelings of being validated and supported by their respective communities. Masson concludes with recommendations for addressing FSL teacher attrition and retention.

Sylvie Roy and Julie Byrd-Clark’s article, “Les identités multiples des jeunes Canadiens,” reflects on the importance of examining former and current discourses on linguistic and cultural competencies in considering the future of young people’s multiple identities. The authors draw upon ethnographic and sociolinguistic data that they gathered in Francophone and French immersion schools in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario. The youth in their studies do not see their identities as fixed but as continuously changing, yet they are deeply concerned with how others see them. The authors emphasize the importance of recognizing the linguistic and cultural repertoires of young people who are living in diverse contexts in order to foster greater inclusion in and belonging to Canadian communities.

In their article, “Supporting reconnecting immigrant families with English Language Learners in rural schools: An exploratory study,” co-authors Gregory Tweedie, Anja Dressler, and Cora-Leah Schmitt focus on how Filipino secondary school immigrant students in Alberta acculturate and develop a sense of belonging when language and content acquisition, social-emotional, and acculturation supports are in place. The authors present and discuss data drawn from interviews with recently reconnected Filipino families as well as written responses from the teachers of the young people in these families. Through their work, the authors conclude that it is particularly important for the young people in families that are reconnecting to have language and content acquisition, social-emotional, and acculturation support for the development of their sense of belonging and identity.

In closing, we at J-BILD hope that these articles will inspire you to reflect upon your own experiences and positions as researchers, learners, educators, fellow beings, and encourage you to continue to thoughtfully and meaningfully engage with yourselves and others.

References

Ahmed, S. (2007). “You end up doing the document rather than doing the doing”: Diversity, race equality and the politics of documentation. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(4), 590–609. doi:10.1080/01419870701356015

Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning. New York: Pearson.

Said, E. (2000). Reflections on Exile and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Posted on

Editorial 2(1): Opening scholarship and rethinking peer review

Volume 2(1): 2018

ALISON CRUMP (Senior Managing Editor), McGill University
LAUREN HALCOMB-SMITH (Managing Editor), Royal Roads University

In his book, The Access Principle, Willinsky (2006) identified the year 2003 as the breakthrough for the open access (OA) movement. Fifteen years after the OA breakthrough, we can see the impact of this movement on high-level policies governing academic publishing and throughout the publishing landscape. For instance, the Canadian Tri-Agency now requires that publicly-funded research be published in open access journals (Government of Canada, 2016). We have also seen the emergence of software to help manage online and open source journals (e.g., OSJ – Open Source Journal) and seen journals transition from print-only to online-only journals. As Eve (2014) argued, however, “there is nothing in the concept of open access that means anything must be done differently except to lower price and permission barriers to research” (p. 137). This is seen, for instance, in Willinsky’s definition of the access principle, that “[a] commitment to the value and quality of research carries with it a responsibility to extend the circulation of such work as far as possible and ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it” (p. xii). In this editorial, we focus on how we can leverage technology in academic publishing to extend the principle of open access toward a principle of open scholarship. Beyond open access, our view of open scholarship is collaborative and transparent, rather than anonymous and potentially adversarial. Open scholarship, we argue, is changing how we produce and share knowledge. We focus on two aspects of J-BILD—the online platform and the collaborative peer mentoring model—that align with our vision of open scholarship.

When planning to launch the Journal of Belonging, Identity, Language, and Diversity (J-BILD), we explored several options for publishing platforms, the most obvious one being OJS (Open Journal Software). This federally-funded software provides editors, reviewers, and authors with a secure backend for managing submissions and an anonymous peer review process. We did not need this functionality for J-BILD because we do not do anonymous peer review of manuscripts. Instead, we use Google docs to allow authors and members of the editorial team to work collaboratively on developing manuscripts for publication (more on this shortly). Because we didn’t need a system to manage anonymous submissions, J-BILD is self-hosted with WordPress, a platform that gives us aesthetic flexibility as well as something most journals within our field do not offer: the ability to comment on published articles. While we have not seen comments on J-BILD articles yet, we are excited about giving readers the option to connect with authors and provide feedback on what they are reading because doing so allows conversations about research to happen more freely and openly than traditional publishing often allows. These ideas of free and open scholarly conversations tie back to our beginnings as a blog with the Belonging, Identity, Language, and Diversity (BILD) community. It is our view that open scholarship is more than open access. It involves opening lines of communication and inviting public dialogue about published research. It also means making the process of producing published research (that is, through peer review) a personal and collaborative one, rather than one masked in “blind” objectivity.

In founding a journal on the principles of open scholarship, we have taken inspiration from Eve (2014), who reminded us that “shifts in publication practice allow us the space to rethink peer review and other practices and to ask whether there are analogous changes, facilitated either socially or technologically, that could be worth exploring at this time of transition” (p. 137). Like Eve, we challenge the traditional model of peer review as the gold standard in academic publishing and have joined a small, but growing community of scholars who are breaking down the practice of double-blind review (e.g., CJNSE; eLife; Hybrid Pedagogy) and taking away what is sometimes an unconstructive atmosphere. We are also avoiding using the ableist language in the term blind review. We recognize that anonymized peer review “works on a series of unspoken ideological assumptions that are never wholly objective and apolitical” (Eve, 2014, p. 139). By challenging the condition of anonymity in peer review, we have developed a model for J-BILD much like the one Jesse Stommel uses for Hybrid Pedagogy, which focuses on building community through collaborative peer mentoring (Linder, 2018).

We have not, however, shirked the idea that a manuscript should be reviewed by more than one person. Each J-BILD manuscript benefits from the feedback of at least three people: peer mentors do several rounds of feedback with authors, focusing primarily on argument structure and content; copy editors do a second review and a closer edit of grammar, references, and formatting; senior copy editors do a final review and formatting check. Authors are closely involved with the editorial team during each of these feedback cycles, and everyone’s identities are known to one another. This collaborative peer mentoring is done entirely on Google docs, which allows multiple people to access and edit the same document. As managing editors, we are also involved throughout the process. For example, peer mentors or copy editors can flag us in a comment, which sends us an email notification that our attention is needed on a manuscript to resolve a question or issue. Because peer mentors and copy editors have the opportunity to work back and forth with authors, this can improve the quality of their feedback. We have heard from peer mentors that this is a more satisfying experience than doing anonymous reviews, one that encourages a greater sense of investment in the research and the final publication.

Another aspect of the collaborative peer mentoring model that contributes to open scholarship is the quick turnaround time our model allows; we are often able to publish manuscripts within six months to a year of their submission. This is entirely due to the extremely engaged and dedicated members of our editorial team, who we feel are so committed because of the interpersonal connections they make and the investment they feel in helping move an author’s work towards publication. In our view, it is extremely important to recognize the people who contribute to a single issue, which we do as an ongoing practice through our interactions with our editorial team, and through collaborative decision making and input on editorial processes and procedures. We also list their names on the same webpage as the issue they have contributed to. This, we hope, will help address the peer reviewer fatigue—that is, the difficulty in finding reviewers for submissions—that some journals experience. Because of the relatively short timeline for publishing a manuscript, authors are able to bring current research and scholarship to the community, which can allow for dialogue that is fresh enough for authors to use the ideas generated to further their research. This has the potential to enrich the quality of research, expand the reach of knowledge, and of course, build community.

We see open scholarship as grounded in the open access movement, thus it is important to acknowledge some issues with OA. First, open access does not mean universal access; there remain barriers, such as language and connectivity barriers (Suber, 2012). Open access also does not mean free. There are many costs associated with producing scholarship; however, in the world of academic publishing, many of these costs are subsumed under the umbrella of “service.” J-BILD, for example, has no fees for authors and operates on an annual budget of about $100 (fees for hosting the WordPress site and for our domain name) and a tremendous number of volunteer hours, not just ours but from the entire editorial team, including the peer mentors, copy editors, senior copy editors, and web developer.

Publishing an online journal that is also open access is changing how knowledge is produced and shared. It is also changing how people read, for instance, by encouraging more critical engagement with reading because readers can click hyperlinks and check sources and have access to more complete data sets (Willinsky, 2006). An area that has not been fully explored in the field of Applied Linguistics is the integration of digital tools, methods, and media in publications. As a field, we could draw some inspiration from work being done in the field of Digital Humanities, where this practice is far more advanced (see, for example, Vectors Journal, which explores the intersections of technology and social relations). We expect that the J-BILD model will continue to evolve over time as authors begin to embrace the affordances of new media and produce texts that are more multimodal.  We hope to continue to push the boundaries of open scholarship and to encourage new kinds of authors and new kinds of conversations in open spaces.

ARTICLE OVERVIEWS

We received 15 submissions for our second issue. We are pleased to be publishing eight manuscripts–five recent research projects and three critical literature reviews.

Research Studies

Marie-Eve Bouchard presents the results of her study of the ideologies that surround the use of rhotics in the Santomean variety of Portuguese in her article, titled “A distinctive use of R as a marker of Santomean identity.” Bouchard presents and discusses data generated through sociolinguistic interviews to show how the distinctive use of rhotics is becoming a marker of Santomean national identity, particularly among younger Santomeans who grew up after the independence of the country and among those who expresses pride in the Santomean variety of Portuguese.

Timothy Loh, author of “‘Maybe Jesus knows Sign’: Resistance through identity formation,” presents the results of anthropological research exploring how Deaf Christians negotiate their identities as members of two distinct identity groups: Deaf and Christian. Contextualizing his research within historical events over the last 50 years, Loh presents his analysis and interpretation of data generated through ethnographic field work to argue that Deaf Christian identity formation does not necessarily include a conflict between deafness and Christianity, but rather a resistance against historically-rooted narratives in Christianity that relate to deafness as a deficit. Loh further argues and demonstrates that Deaf Christians use language and communication to index and reinforce their identity as Deaf Christians.

“Spanish Language Ecosystems in New Mexico and their Impact on Spanish Language Learners,” by Sarah O’Brien, explores how U.S. students’ receptiveness to Spanish language learning is impacted by the social perceptions of the language that exist within their surrounding community. O’Brien shares the results recent research within three school districts in New Mexico, where she generated data through mixed-methods over a period of seven months. Through her interpretation and discussion of these data, O’Brien explores the stratified views held by members of the school communities, specifically related to ideologies of language related to learning and speaking Spanish, concluding with a number of language planning suggestions for improving outcomes for Spanish language learners.

“Navigating Competing Identities through Stance-Taking: Migration, Class, and Nation,” by Elizabeth Peacock, presents the results of ethnographic research on Ukrainian teenagers’ use of stance-taking on issues of migration as a means of aligning or disalinging themselves in interactions with others. Grounded in stance theory, Peacock’s paper seeks to address limitations in the existing body of research related to the ways in which individuals take up stances in everyday interactions. Through her analysis and interpretation of qualitative data generated through group discussion, Peacock makes links between stance-taking and social identities as they relate to socioeconomic class and migration in Ukraine, revealing the broader views held by Ukrainian teenagers on migration.

Gregory Tweedie and Robert Johnson, authors of “Listening instruction and patient safety: Exploring Medical English as a lingua franca (MELF) for nursing education,” present the results of a recent student exploring Medical English as a lingua franca (MELF). Specifically, the authors look at the intelligibility of interactions using MELF and its implications on patient safety. Through their analysis and discussion of mixed-methods data, the authors argue that intelligibility can have implications on patient safety, concluding their paper with recommendations related to language education of nursing professionals in sociolinguistic contexts where MELF is used.

Critical Literature Reviews

“L’enseignement du français chez les Premières Nations d’hier à aujourd’hui: Enjeux didactiques, pratiques pédagogiques et perspective interculturelle,” by Nancy Crepeau and Carole Fleuret, takes a critical stance to explore the pedagogical foundations at the origins of current French-language teaching practices in Quebec. In particular, the authors focus on the implications of current teaching practices on students from First Nations backgrounds and identify issues related to learners’ language repertoire, academic achievement, and plurilingual competence. The authors conclude their review with recommendations for the future.

In his paper, titled, “A case for policy analysis in minority language discourse: A critical literature review,” Taylor Ellis explores Indigenous language revitalization in educational contexts. Beginning with a critical review of linguistic diversity metaphors, such as language-as-resource (Ruiz, 1984) and language ecology (Hornberger, 2002), as well as specific case examples from around the world, Ellis problematizes and highlights the issues inherent to the language-as-resource model as a whole.

Hailey Iacono presents “Designing opportunities to support pre-service teachers in noticing and understanding how to position students competently: An overview of supporting literature.” Iacono frames her critical literature review within the context of recent educational reforms, specifically as they relate to the mathematics classroom, and limitations in the scope of teacher educational programs. Through her exploration of the literature, Iacono successfully highlights several guiding principles to address such limitations, ultimately making the argument that more research on teacher noticing of interactions relating to positioning students competently is needed.

REFERENCES

 Eve, M. P. (2014). Open access and the humanities: Contexts, controversies and the future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Government of Canada (2016). Tri-agency open access policy on publications. Retrieved from, http://www.science.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_F6765465.html?OpenDocument

Hornberger, N. H. (2002). Multilingual language policies and the continua of biliteracy: An ecological approach. Language Policy, 1(1), 27–51.

Linder, K. (2018, Feb. 19). Dr. Jesse Stommel on founding a journal. Retrieved from, https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/research/podcast/e99/

Ruíz, R. (1984). Orientations in language planning. NABE: The Journal for the National Association for Bilingual Education, 8(2), 15-34.

Suber, P. (2012). Open access. Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: The MIT Press.

Willinsky, J. (2006). The access principle: The case for open access to research and scholarship. Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: The MIT Press.

css.php