https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.1.443

Editorial

Received: November 25, 2017. Accepted: December 1, 2017.

How to cite this article (APA 6th ed.):
Cárdenas, M. L. (2018). Editorial. HOW, 25(1), 6-9. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.25.1.443.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. License Deed can be consulted at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Welcome to the first edition of the twenty-fifth volume of the HOW journal! Reaching this goal is the result of the commitment and sustained support of our Editorial Team, the Colombian association of teachers of English (ASOCOPI - Asociación Colombiana de Profesores de Inglés), and the academic support of the Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development journal, edited by Universidad Nacional de Colombia. We want to give a warm welcome to the new members of our Editorial Advisory Board and to thank them for their willingness and enthusiasm to work with us in the evaluation and selection of manuscripts: Miriam Ebsworth (New York University, USA), María Eugenia Guapacha (Universidad del Valle, Colombia), Shirley Steinberg (University of Calgary, Canada), and Manka Varghese (University of Washington, USA). We are sure the HOW journal will benefit from their expertise.

We are also pleased to share with you that Colciencias—the Colombian research agency in charge of the evaluation and classification of journals edited within the country—has issued the results of its latest evaluation. According to the new national policies, journals are classified in one of these four categories: A1 (the highest), A2, B or C. HOW was ranked in category C and, bearing in mind the challenges in complying with the new parameters, we have reasons to feel satisfied with this result. Nonetheless, our appraisals regarding the weight assigned to the citation system remain.

Our readership and collaborators should know that the following criteria, established by Colciencias (2016) in such evaluation process, were fulfilled by our publication: editorial processing (in tune with international standards) and punctuality in publication (we now publish in January and July); evaluation process (peer review and clear criteria for such process); the journal's international visibility (in different indexing systems and databases); and the impact of the publication (citations received). This last parameter was decisive in our classification. As we might remember, the impact of a journal is measured according to its position in the four quartiles set out by the Journal Citation Report (JCR) or the Scimago Journal Report (SJR) and the h-index (h5).

HOW, like most Colombian journals in the field of humanities and languages, has not reached its inclusion in those reports yet. However, our visibility has been granted by several databases and indexing systems. We are registered with Infotrac GALE Cengage Learning - Informe Académico, Dialnet, the Directory of Open Access Journals - DOAJ, and EBSCO. The journal is also indexed in CLASE, Educational Research Abstracts - ERA, The Education Resources Information Center - ERIC, The Emerging Sources Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics), Latindex, MLA International Bibliography, Redalyc, and SciELO Colombia. As can be witnessed in the latest classification of Colombian journals, the JCR and the SJR reports play a paramount role because they determine ranking in the upper levels; and, although the h5 was a determining factor in our classification, we still regret the fact that other indexing systems are not given the same status in the evaluation processes led by Colciencias.

Despite the tensions we live with and the big challenges we face to maintain a place in the national classification, we are clear about the mission and vision of a journal like ours in the creation of communities of practice. After having published twenty-five volumes, we are able to reaffirm that we can act as a steering force in teacher research and continue being a forum for experienced and new generations of English language teachers.

In this edition, we gladly present nine articles concerning pedagogical processes in undergraduate programmes in English language teaching (ELT), bilingualism, language learning, and teacher education.

The Research Reports section gathers seven articles. We begin with the article by Edgar Lucero-Babativa and Jeesica Scalante-Morales, from Universidad de La Salle, Colombia, who report on a study focused on the interactional styles of teacher educators based upon three English language teacher education undergraduate programmes in the English language teacher education classroom. The use of ethnomethodological conversation analysis and self-evaluation of teacher talk let them uncover teacher educators' interactional styles, which are characterized as a mixture of both individual (heterogeneous interactional styles) and common (homogeneous interactional styles) social acts.

Next, Dánisa Salinas and Maximiliano Ayala, from Universidad Andrés Bello, in Chile, share with us their investigation regarding the process of professional identity construction of two English as a foreign language student-teachers from a sociocultural theoretical lens. We can learn that the process of student-teachers' professional identity construction is unstable and dynamic, and is shaped by inter-related personal and external factors.

The following three contributions come from Colombian authors. Sandra Milena Ramírez Ortiz and Marco Tulio Artunduaga Cuéllar present an account of an action research study which sought to examine the effects of authentic tasks in oral production with a group of high school students. Afterwards, Patricia Kim Jiménez, from Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, informs us about an exploratory, descriptive case study conducted with university students. Its aim was to identify the learners' perceptions regarding the English language learning and their commitment level through that process.

Afterwards, Angie Sisquiarco, Santiago Sánchez Rojas, and José Vicente Abad tell us about the influence of strategies-based feedback in 6th grade students' oral performance. To attain their goal, they led an action research study that embraced the analysis of students' oral performance through assessment and self-assessment rubrics, applied inventories to students before and after, giving them the strategies-based feedback, and interviews to students and one parent.

Then comes the article authored by Jennyfer Paola Camargo Cely, from Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia. She reports on English as a foreign language (EFL) and self-contained teachers' discourses on bilingualism within the context of professional development. Her contribution lets us learn how certain practices and ideologies vis-à-vis bilingualism have influenced teachers' professional development. We can also find implications for further research in the areas of teachers' professional growth, bilingualism, and bilingual education.

We close the first section of this edition with an article by Gabriel Vicente Obando Guerrero and Ana Clara Sánchez Solarte, from Universidad de Nariño, concerning initial teacher education programs. Their investigation contributes to the identification of the degree of satisfaction of prospective teachers, a very important issue in times of universities' accreditation. Additionally, it makes us think of the attention given to students' feedback in the processes carried out to achieve it.

In the second section, Reports on Pedagogical Experiences, we can read the contribution from Jairo Enrique Castañeda-Trujillo and Ana Jackelin Aguirre-Hernández. The authors, from Universidad de La Salle, Colombia, report on a pedagogical experience that involved pre-service English teachers during their first semester of the teaching practicum. Through the participants' voices, the authors inform us about future teachers' awareness of the context they are working on and of the role of the mentor teacher in such understanding, among other things.

In the third section, Reflections and Revision of Themes, we have another article concerning teacher education. Colombian author Carlo Granados-Beltrán invites us to reflect upon the need for critical research in undergraduate Colombian English language teaching. Interestingly, the analysis of on-going projects and of an inventory of research conducted by students as a graduation requirement for a BA programme, leads him to question the tendency to mainly use action research, the instrumentalization of language and research, and the subalternity for those being researched.

In connection to Granados-Beltrán's conclusions, we wish to reiterate that our publication is always interested in publishing studies carried out using different kinds of research approaches and by teachers from different settings. Given the role research plays in Colombian initial teacher education, we will continue supporting novice teacher-researchers in their exploration of the options to get published. Above all, we maintain our compromise to sharing knowledge with our ELT community both within the country and overseas. To do so, we count on teachers from established research communities as well as on experienced teachers willing to share their professional practices intended to achieve quality education.

Melba Libia Cárdenas
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá
Guest Editor

References

Colciencias. (2016). Convocatoria No. 768 de 2016 para indexación de revistas científicas colombianas especializadas - Publindex (términos de referencia firmados) [Call No. 768, 2016 for the classification of Colombian specialized scientific journals - Publindex: Approved document]. Bogotá, CO: Author. Retrieved from http://www.colciencias.gov.co/sites/default/files/upload/convocatoria/terminosdereferencia-conv768-2016-firmados.pdf.         [ Links ]