NEWSLETTER | December 2018
Seminar Report: Reviewing for PME: A Primer for (New) Reviewers Submitted by David M. Gomez (Chile) Peer reviewing has been considered for a long time essential for improving the quality of scientific work. But peer reviewing skills, as with any other skill, need practice to achieve mastery. PME conferences rely on voluntary peer reviewing by eligible PME members to ensure its traditionally high scientific standards. The PME reviewing process for Research Reports has some peculiarities distinguishing it from other venues, such as (a) the detailed comments expected on each of the following content categories: rationale, theoretical framework and related literature, methodology/argument, results and interpretation/implications, academic style, and relevance to the PME audience; and (b) the lack of an opportunity to revise a submission before deciding on its acceptance. The PME reviewing seminar aims at providing early career researchers and researchers new to PME with a hands-on introduction on how to perform high-quality scientific reviews of PME Research Reports. In PME 42, the seminar was facilitated by David M. Gómez (Universidad de O’Higgins, Chile) and Anika Dreher (University of Education-Freiburg, Germany). We were very pleased by the size of the audience: about 20 participants from a diversity of countries, most of them early researchers
with no previous experience of reviewing either for PME or for other conferences/journals. After an introduction to peer reviewing and to the specificities of the PME reviewing system, participants engaged in a hands-on reviewing experience of Research Reports contributed from authors submitting to PME 38, 39, and 40. This work was resumed in the second session of the seminar and, after finishing their own reviews, participants were able to contrast their impressions with the real reviews that those Reports had received. The quality of reviews is a core input for the work of the International Program Committee of each PME conference, and we expect this seminar to help us get more and better reviews in future PME conferences. I want to take a moment to thank Anika Dreher for her service to PME by facilitating this seminar since PME 39. I invite all of you who are experienced in peer reviewing and want to help in shaping the future of PME to volunteer for coordinating or facilitating future seminars. You can also contribute by sharing with us your submitted Research Reports and corresponding reviews for using them as working examples.
PME 43 - Impressions
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