Perspectives on Urban Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: The Promise and Pressures of Student-Run Academic Journals: Voices From the Field

Abstract

Perspectives on Urban Education (POUE) is a student-run academic journal, operating in association with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. The journal provides an interactive forum to investigate critical issues in urban education. The purpose of our electronic journal format is to provide a vehicle for fostering conversations about the complexities of urban education among practitioners, researchers, policymakers and graduate students, groups who often work in isolation from each other. We encourage the larger community interested in these issues to use the format to provide scholarship, commentary, and critique essential for investigating critical issues in urban education. We continue to cultivate the potential for dialogue through an electronic journal to lead to increased cooperation and understanding among all those concerned about urban education.

This presentation offers an overview by the editorial team of POUE on the difficulties and rewards of cultivating, training, and sustaining graduate student reviewers for scholarly manuscripts throughout the yearly publication cycle. The editors describe annual recruitment practices and their effectiveness for generating a team of graduate student reviewers, including web-blasts, school-wide marketing, and individual recruiting, We outline our training procedures for new graduate student reviewers using sample manuscripts and simulated reviews during intensive weekend educational sessions. We also address the possibilities and idiosyncrasies involved in managing an exclusively online journal. Finally, we describe several continuing concerns with utilizing student reviewers, including slow turn-around times and high turnover rates year-over-year.

Authors

• Andy Danilchick, University of Pennsylvania

• Robert Jean LeBlanc, University of Pennsylvania