But that in itself is not enough; it does not guarantee that what is being written, spoken, or listened to is meeting the interests of a readership. From the outset ELiSS has used peer review drawing as far as possible on two reviewers per paper with the exception of commissioned papers. We have now created and used a panel of reviewers for all submitted papers over the past three issues so the editorial board can take a broader view of journal, discipline community needs. The board of course takes oversight of the papers that are published, the appearance of the journal, what the success rate of submissions is per issue, and, eventually, considers how published papers might impact on practice and research. This last is the most difficult question to answer. We know there are many arenas including the recent C-SAP annual conference where articles published are mentioned, discussed, and of course, most of this discussion is difficult to capture. Perhaps we should consider how periodicals that are not traditional research-publications attract a readership. This may take us away initially from journals that are centrally concerned with the social sciences.

All journals and periodicals create and seek to maintain both a writership and a readership. For journals with a strong rating for research purposes this may be relatively unproblematic. For a journal seeking to impact on teaching and learning through research, scholarship and practice the task bears similarities and differences.

To date ELiSS has sought to build up the writership but to do so in ways that provide interesting material using different presentational approaches so that it is of appeal to a wide readership. We know that the ELiSS site has posed problems for readers and we are glad there has been progress recently in addressing the outstanding issues..

What matters perhaps is not to separate out a readership and a writership and we certainly have strong traditions in social theory to warn us of the dangers of doing so. Taking the ‘new literacies’ discussed in this issue by Amanda French and Jenny Worsley we need to explore ways of combining reading, interpreting, writing, discussing, and responding through the ELiSS site. This means we need to build up an active readership not just in the sense of people who read the articles regularly but rather more as an involved readership such as we might find with London Book Review. Here readers will probably read a few articles in depth and may respond either via the letters page or through the blog. They might return to some of the other articles or reviews a few weeks later, perhaps influenced by the blog or similar. But what holds the periodical together is the scholarly concern that runs through lead articles and reviews.

Our current issue of ELiSS provides six papers. There are overlaps between them but they cover different fields. Jim Moir, a member of the ELiSS editorial board raises challenges in his paper that face the entire HE sector. His paper in effect becomes an editorial paper and is particularly welcome in that respect.. Moir takes Personal Development Planning (PDP) and shows how the political may fall down the cracks readily becoming effaced. The points he makes refer just as much to other parts of the work in institutions. They apply, albeit in different ways, to course review, validation, and indeed to processes of curriculum development.

Broadening Moir’s point on the need for sociology input to a reflexive project on web 2.0 usage to all the social sciences raises questions over identity, authorship and textual responsibility. Fidelma Ashe in her paper confronts these issues through her own practice in teaching sexual politics showing how she has embedded this directly in the context of teaching in Northern Ireland. Her delineation of wider political and religious contexts, the regular shifting of student and tutor horizons in classrooms reveals how fragile relations can be. But her paper brings out how a determined teacher can work in ways that both challenge and support learning rather than simply providing an external researcher viewpoint. The questions of reading and intentionality form a focus.

Embedding the teacher and collegial selves in changing practice is a theme that also runs through the papers by Lesley Mycroft and Andrea Lyons-Lewis. Here we see some of the practical issues in using and working with web logs and supporting reflection. The authors bring in the political through reference to student backgrounds and the immediate classroom contexts as they impact on student experiences. We see the potential transformations to learners and appreciate the hard work by tutors and learners in this process. It is this close grained detail that shows reading, interaction and learning in developmental terms. The two projects are focused on specific initiatives but the experiences conveyed are found in many other settings. It is this which makes the projects applicable to other departments and institutions. In fact, Mycroft’s work here in teacher education is directly applicable to many social science classrooms while Lyons-Lewis’s use of blogs in core skills and methods modules expresses many of the dilemmas found in all our teaching settings. Put beside Moir’s paper these two papers together with the classroom settings explored by Ashe provide a nuanced set of interactions based on carefully conducted research.

Similarly research runs through French and Worsley’s use of double entry journals and is the core of Finn and Green’s paper on volunteering. For French and Worsley the commitment is to action research with students on teacher education courses . There is more to be done with the research project as the authors explain. What they achieve here is not only the presentation of an approach that can be valuable for all of us in teaching but also the inclusion of examples of how the interventions had different effects on learners. Their work specifically engages with ‘new literacies approaches’.

The paper by Finn and Green shares the detailed research approach of the other papers. In this particular case the authors are using established theories such as that of Astin on involvement theory. Their research was conducted over two years and this time we are looking at the impact of volunteering by students from different backgrounds and cultures from those in the placements. The students involved were 27 international students. What Finn and Green bring out is the difficulties the students faced in meeting everyday language and slang in the placements. This is a way in to the deeper cultural meanings and ways of acting employed by students. The tutors are mediating between different experiences which their research illustrates.

All our papers provide researcher input. In this particular issue the papers present active classroom and placement research, bringing the values of the author/researchers to the fore. These foreground the many, varied and sometimes contradictory assumptions held about learners, learning and teaching by students and teachers.

I hope readers find they indentify with the experiences presented and that the research provides ideas, experiences of value. But I believe these papers offer more. They enable the reader to think about the demands the work places on teachers who are active researchers into their own and colleagues’ practices. The authors all confront the ‘what next?’ questions and the ‘what are some of the problems faced?’. While each project lends itself to further work what is distinctive is the sense of what they offer in ‘what we can do as teachers’. Mindful of difficulties surrounding their research the authors present positive developments of a sort that can be all too easily forgotten in large institutions.

How can ELiSS support the work presented here? Publishing it is one step but a journal such as ELiSS needs to do more if it is to secure its readership base and develop new papers and more writing. It needs active involvement whether through Board members, other interested colleagues and of course the authors themselves taking a lead on further work. The Board will consider a proposal at its next meeting to take some or all of these papers forward through a shared discussion through the journal blog and through new opinion pieces.

To conclude with reference to some of the journals mentioned above, what makes London Review of Books, or New York Review of Books so valuable and secured a readership is the cut and thrust of paper, response, new papers and reviews building on previous work. ELiSS needs in 2010 to develop an opinion forming capacity which sits alongside existing C-SAP work but uses the fact that the papers published here are rounded, complete and valuable researched statements. That this is so is of course an outcome of the reviewing process. In addition to the mentions of individual reviewers on the site I would like here to thank all the reviewers in 2009 for their careful and meticulous work. One of the most rewarding experiences I have enjoyed this year has been seeing how authors have responded so positively and conscientiously to the carefully argued suggestions and requirements of reviewers. The reviewing improves papers and now we need to go further and take the papers forward to different environments and enable others to gain from the work set out in this issue as well as past issues.

We have learned over the last year the value of the themed or special issue. Our two such issues to date attracted more papers than previously. Each raised well researched issues. There is always a need for a non-themed issue such as the present one so that authors know that their work on learning and teaching will always be considered and that as a board we do not restrict papers to specific fields or approaches. Alongside that ELiSS does reject papers or require substantial change to submissions to ensure publications are what a well informed social science audience and beyond will reasonably expect. This pattern of themed and non-themed issues will continue in 2010 when we will publish three issues and will do our best to bring forward a special issue on student writing as well as our agreed special issue on teaching sensitive issues.