Responding to Critical Responding to Critical FeedbackFeedbackEASS Autumn SchoolSue NicholsFriday 24th April 2009

Critical feedbackCritical feedbackIs how a discourse community

communicates to its members and would-be members about its practices and values;

Can be formal or informal; written, verbal or nonverbal;

Occurs within a social/power relationship which is experienced differently depending on the identities of reviewer and reviewed.

Reading reviewers’ Reading reviewers’ feedbackfeedbacko Go – why this paper is worthy of publication

o Wait – the current state of the paper

o Stop – What needs to be done before the paper can be published

Comments Reviewer 1Comments Reviewer 1This is an interesting and well-written paper. The research reported in the paper is located in Australia, but has relevance to world-wide readership as many countries emphasise the importance of early childhood development and the expectations that parents will play an active role in promoting early learning. The nature of that role and the expectations associated with the role tend to be under-researched and reported. This paper makes an important contribution to the area.

 Currently, the paper provides a clear description of the project, emphasising the resources accessed by parents to support their children’s learning. It would be strengthened by clearer theoretical and conceptual focus – for example exploring the bases underpinning increased attention from governments and agencies for promoting parental engagement in early learning. The contradiction in some of the rhetoric is noted in the introduction – i.e., that many deficit views of parents remain. How does this fit within the theoretical and conceptual framework of the project? Some problematisation of the issues around positioning parents in this way would also fit in the introduction.

Comments Reviewer 2Comments Reviewer 2I appreciate the fundamental rationale for this paper: that an appreciation of parents as active agents in resourcing their children’s development would aid the development of more equal partnerships between parents and educators, and indeed this is a relevant topic for this journal, likely to be of interest to early childhood professionals. I take this paper to be a first opportunity to engage with the data collected, and I think the authors fulfil their goal of documenting ‘ ways in which parents seek information, advice and resources related to children’s learning and development’. However, although I found the interview data very interesting, the analysis remained somewhat unsatisfying.

More from Reviewer 1More from Reviewer 1• The section on p.2 entitled Research into parents’

information awareness and use needs some elaboration. It acts as a sort of literature review, but is generally not couched in those terms. I suggest some discussion of context for the studies reported.

• Some acronyms – such as DFCS and NESB (p. 3) – need to be spelled out in full in the text.

• The discussion that follows each table offers some interpretation – this tends to be more speculation than theorising, so I wonder about its usefulness.

• Could some interview data also be used to elaborate the points reported from the survey?

• How can the project reported in the paper change the ways in which parents are positioned in relation to accessing early childhood education and/or professionals?

More from Reviewer 2More from Reviewer 2• The paper describes fully the different ways the two

parents accessed information, and their differing priorities and goals in doing so. The analysis of their actions could, I think, be further developed.

• I would also have liked an extended comment on the implications of their approaches to information gathering for their general child rearing styles. Apart from demonstrating that parents are active agents in finding information to support their child’s development, why should we read this paper?

• If space is an issue, perhaps the first half of the paper, the survey results, which in my opinion are less gripping, could be cut or summarised.

My responseMy responseThank you for the opportunity to revise this paper.

This letter details the changes we have made in response to the reviewers’ recommendations.

 Reviewer 1 observed that ‘It would be

strengthened by clearer theoretical and conceptual focus’. Along similar lines, review 2 asked for an expansion of the reference to the concepts of ‘Bridging and bonding social capital’.

 Action: The introduction has been further

developed to explicate the concepts of social capital and social networks and the relations between both of these and social class. Literature in this field has been cited.

Concepts of networking and capital are central both to social policies aimed at resourcing parents and to theorising the differential uptake of the services implemented as a result of these policies. Social capital can be defined as ‘material and immaterial resources that individuals and families are able to access through their social ties’ (Horvat, Weininger & Lareau 2003, 323). Social capital can be considered a kind of stock but it is important to acknowledge that 'stocks are primarily valuable in so far as they generate flows, which provide benefits/welfare to some sets of clients or consumers' (Johnson et al 2005, 3). Two related issues that have preoccupied social analysis are the significance of locality and of socio-economic status in families’ networking activities and associated access to social capital. Working-class families’ networks have been described as characterised by spatial and relational proximity, in other words by family members and close friends living in the immediate neighbourhood (Bridge 2002). Thus they are characterised by ‘bonding’ rather than ‘bridging’ ties or, in other words, by membership of the ‘social fields of insiders’ rather than by the ‘activity of building connections between social fields’ (Baerenholdt & Aarsaether 2002, 162) etc.

Paragraph added to Paragraph added to introductionintroduction

My response cont.My response cont.Reviewer 1 asked for some problematisation of the

issues around positioning parents. Action: We have woven this into the discussion of

capital and networking by stressing the importance of not relying on notions of ‘class culture’ to explain families’ differential access to and take-up of services.

However, it is important not to conclude that forms of networking reflect class culture since this may lead to viewing working-class communities in particular as fixed and inflexible. One study which challenges this view canvassed the information seeking practices of parents in an African American urban neighbourhood (Spink and Cole 2001). Residents ranked family members as the most important source of general news and neighbours best for security information; however they identified doctors as the key source of health information. This suggests that parents in this community valued and sought out the expertise of professionals. Access to services, and a sense of welcome by these services, may be equally or more salient than assumed class-based social networking practices (Hayden 2003).

My response cont.My response cont.Reviewer 2 asked for an extended comment on the

implications of their approaches to information gathering for their general child rearing styles.

 

Response: We do not feel comfortable drawing conclusions about our participants’ general child rearing styles. Apart from the fact that we did not ask questions on this topic and so lack data from which to draw such conclusions, we have some difficulty with the concept of generalised styles of child rearing (related to the methods that have traditionally been used to construct such categories). Reviewer 2 argues that ‘information-collecting, tell[s] us about parents’ social positioning, their understandings of their role and responsibility vis a vis their children, and what their priorities are for their children.’

At the risk of sounding chicken-and-egg, our research suggests that parents’ priorities, together with their access to (and sense of welcome by) services, strongly influences their information collecting. This is backed up by research in the field of Everyday Life Information Seeking which has demonstrated that working-class and even under-class parents take advantage of a range of services and expertise when these are provided in an accessible manner and when they judge it important to do so. We are aware that the two cases on one level reflect the expected social class differences. However the cases also foreground elements such as religion, geographic isolation, parent gender and exceptionality which are often ignored in class based analyses and complicate class patterns.

Action: We have addressed this issue by including a statement to this effect as part of our introduction of the cases.

Reviewer 1 comments that the function of the section headed Research into parents’ information awareness and use is not clear.

 Action: We agree that this section does not

take the form of a literature review. Therefore we have integrated some of this material into the expanded introduction where its function in establishing the conceptual framework and socio-political context for the study should now be clearer.

 Reviewer 1 has asked for acronyms to be

spelled out in full in the text.  Action: Done as requested. 

My response cont.My response cont.

My response cont.My response cont. Reviewer 1 notes the speculative nature of

some of the interpretive comments relating to the survey.

 Action: This section has been streamlined with

several interpretive comments removed. Reviewer 1 asked ‘Could some interview data

also be used to elaborate the points reported from the survey?

 Response: As the paper was already quite

long, and as this was a suggestion rather than a direction, we have chosen not to add more illustrative data.

My review of a journal My review of a journal articlearticleThank you for the opportunity to read this paper. The issue of parent involvement is so much neglected generally in teacher education that any initiative to put it on the agenda counts as an innovation and is truly welcome. The strategy, as far as it is described, is stronger as a teacher education curriculum intervention than as a research process. Because this paper is written as a research report, it needs to be strengthened in relation to that aspect. This may involve some re-writing of sections and even, depending on the writer’s perception of usefulness, some re-analysis of data. The comments below are not intended to be prescriptive but rather to indicate aspects in which some elaboration or strengthening of the discussion would be constructive.

The writer introduces the debate about whether school-to-home

information transmission strategies can be considered truly

interactive and establishes this as a key question. Yet the

discussion did not resolve, in this reader’s mind, whether or not

the newsletters did function interactively, partly because

‘interaction’ was not defined operationally.

How could the writer respond to this feedback?

The reporting of data analysis had a limiting effect on the

discussion. The reliance of quantitative data in reporting of

results signals to the reader that the figures are the important

thing in action research. While counts can give some

impression of the relative significance of themes, a list of counts

with brief descriptions does not make for engaging reading.

How could the writer respond to this feedback?

The analysis of the newsletters focused mainly on their content

and organisation. The important issue of mode of address was

not considered. How the teachers speak to parents through

their texts is important and this could have been examined

using tools of linguistic or narrative analysis either over the

whole data set or through a close reading of a sub-sample.

How could the writer respond to this feedback?

Working with brief in-process Working with brief in-process feedbackfeedback

“Expand”“I’m getting lost here”“Need to clinch this

point”“Evidence?”“Overstated”“Contradicts previous”“Seems out of place”

Notes from peer discussion in Notes from peer discussion in sessionsession

If you need more explicit If you need more explicit feedbackfeedback “Can this be fixed at the sentence level or do I

need to re-organise this whole section?” “ Can you show me where my argument needs

strengthening?” “Are you suggesting I need a new

introduction/conclusion?” “ Can we work on just this paragraph?” “Would it help if I wrote an outline before

starting a new draft?” “Can you show me how you’ve tackled this in

your writing/research?” “Can you recommend a reading which shows a

good example of this kind of work?”

Making the most of critical Making the most of critical feedbackfeedbackBelieve the positives.Take the chance to improve.Gain insights into how your work will be

received within a discourse community.Use it to help you realise what you have

been taking for granted.Develop a stronger rationale for your

methodology and use it to defend decisions.Be willing to restructure at the whole text or

section level (not just at the sentence or word level).

Follow up leads for new reading.