Co-Editors:
Burke Scarbrough, University of Minnesota Duluth
Lee Fisher, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
MEJ, the online journal of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English, publishes scholarly articles, personal narratives, opinion/position pieces on topical teaching issues, short creative work (mostly poetry), and pieces focused on pedagogical strategies of major interest to English and Language Arts teachers of all instructional levels.
MEJ seeks to represent both quantitative and qualitative research—papers that are driven by classroom experiment, observation, description, anecdote, survey, interview(s), case study, and cross-cultural comparison directly related to pedagogy, instructional research, curriculum, and literacy.
MEJ will also value pieces taking positions on important current issues impacting those teaching as well as being taught in the classroom.
MEJ’s audience consists of teachers from the elementary to the college level who want to learn more about effective teaching techniques, share their own classroom discoveries, and have a platform for interacting with those who present their work.
In order to meet our yearly publication date, articles and essays must be submitted by February 1, 2024.
MEJ encourages the submission of three kinds of pieces:
- Formal research-driven articles, driven by theory, that will be peer reviewed and tagged as such when published. These might be survey driven articles; case studies; classroom experiments; traditional scholarly articles on language, literacy, and literature; online or face-to-face pedagogy; bibliographical essays; etc.
- Informal pedagogical pieces, driven by personal experience in the classroom, that will NOT be peer reviewed. These might be “teaching tips,” or experiential pieces that come directly from a teacher’s (not always successful) attempts to address a specific classroom challenge; narratives by new teachers adjusting to their new classroom circumstances; effective methods for using technology in the classroom; methods for responding to student work; collaborative learning and how to manage it; requiring more student writing and how to manage the workload; matters of classroom assessment; interviews/conversations with mentor teachers, writers, or exemplary teaching professionals; management of classroom discussion; assembling teaching units that stimulate and succeed; efforts at enabling students to teach each other; creative projects of substance; effective strategies for helping students to use the internet responsibly and productively; and so forth.
- Opinion/position essays, on issues of concern to those working in the profession, that will NOT be peer reviewed. These might discuss writing across the curriculum; censorship; the role of testing in the educational process; the need for all teachers, at all levels, to continue to write in their disciplines and areas of interest; working in, with, and for the multi-cultural classroom; creative ways for public school teachers and college instructors to work in the same classroom and enrich the student experience in the process; making peer teacher evaluation a reciprocally constructive process; recognizing the teaching of English as the most important teaching endeavor; issues of educational policy; etc.
MEJ encourages pieces of all lengths, from a few pages to thirty. Citation of sources (primary or secondary) should be done in accordance with the MLA Handbook for Writers for Research Papers, 9th edition.
MEJ looks forward to hearing from all of you.
Please submit materials at any time to co-editors Burke Scarbrough & Lee Fisher at MEJeditor@mcte.org.
Deadline for drafts: February 1, 2024
MEJ 