http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.61055

Editorial

How to cite this article (APA 6^th ed.):
Nieto Cruz, M. C., & Cárdenas, M. L. (2017). Editorial. PROFILE Issues in Teachers' Professional Development, 19(1), 7-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v19n1.61055.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Publishing in English-medium journals often involves becoming familiar with new practices, thus layering on additional demands for scholars who are already successful in local and regional contexts and presenting challenges to those relatively new to writing for publication. (p. 2)... We consider that many of the practices of writing for academic publishing are hidden or opaque and involve ideologies that discriminate against some scholars more than others. We are committed to contributing to ways of working toward greater and more equal access to academic publishing by scholars around the world. (p. 5)¹

To start, the exercise of writing is a difficult task. Nothing more challenging than the whiteness of an empty page. Whether the writing outcome is a personal product or a piece to be socialized in the academic world, the writing task demands a lot from the ones that succumb by pleasure or obligation to the writing assignment. Apart from the skill of writing, authors of articles published in academic journals are obliged to stick to the specific publication's parameters. Strict datelines, number of words and specific sections to be included will shape the writer's production. The resulting texts in most of the circumstances will fit the publications' guidelines but may, in turn, restrict the writer's flow and line of thought. Authors may be restricted by limitations but if they want to publish they should stick to the parameters of the target publication. In other words, stick and publish or ignore and be ignored.

Once an academic paper is received by a publication, it goes through different filters. These have the purpose of assuring the quality of the submitted information. The struggle of being accepted takes place. The publication rules and modulates the choice of its substratum. The writers' products are at the mercy of the different filters along which we find evaluators and policies. Once the demanding exercise of revision is finished, the author's production is given the red, yellow or green light to be published. In the first instance, authors are invited to rethink their papers; in the second case they are expected to resubmit with big or small changes and in the third case to observe minor or no commentaries at all. Regardless of the result, contributors and readers can and should expect fairness, clarity and respect for their time from a publication.

PROFILE, as an example of an English-medium journal, has worked hard not only in the construction of a niche that fulfills the standards of national and international norms, but in its interest to reach different audiences and to spread ideas of novel writers and scholars alike. The ideology that has moved the publication is connected to the belief that discrimination is not a premise we hold. Empowerment is the spark that ignites our engines.

In order to reach a wider readership, academic journals look for their inclusion in indexing systems and databases. Although we have been accepted in several of them, we constantly submit our journal to other entities. This time we are pleased to let you know that PROFILE has just been indexed in IRESIE (Índice de Revistas de Educación Superior e Investigación Educativa), a bibliographical database that specializes in education in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal and that is led by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Additionally, the journal has been included in The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS). The journals that are selected for inclusion in IRESIE and ERIH PLUS comply with international standards of editorial quality. This is our case, and we hope we can sustain it thanks to the cooperation of our sponsors and editorial committees.

To this end, we gladly welcome the new scholars who have accepted our invitation to take part in the reviewing processes of namely: Janice Bland (University of Muenster, Germany); Alice Chik (Macquarie University, Australia); Mário Cruz (Politécnico do Porto, Portugal); Greta Gorsuch (Texas Tech University, USA); John S. Hedgcock (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, USA); Anthony J. Liddicoat (University of Warwick, UK); Faezeh Mehrang (Massey University, New Zealand); Jackie Nenchin (Molloy College, Division of Education, USA); Melina Porto (Universidad Nacional de La Plata and CONICET, Argentina); and Muhammad Rahimi (University of Auckland, New Zealand). We very much appreciate their positive response to our invitation to be part of our board of reviewers. Their collaboration, as well as the support received from scholars who have accompanied us for several years, is very much appreciated and encourages us to uphold the academic rigor of our publication.

This edition contains eleven papers. The first section, Issues from Teacher Researchers, begins with four articles about English language teacher education. Fatih Güngör starts by sharing with us the tensions between English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher identities and in-service teacher education in the Turkish context. In his narrative study the author examines the incongruities between teacher identities and in-service training programs offered by the Ministry of National Education in Turkey, based upon the use of the activity theory. To do so, he focuses on the reflections of two EFL teachers concerning their environment, behaviors, beliefs, competencies, and missions.

Then, Chilean author Diego Muñoz Campos invites us to get acquainted with the processes and results of an exploratory, descriptive study that sought to identify the perceptions of pre-service teachers about the impact of a problem-based learning activity on the development of key competencies, including higher order thinking skills and reflective, research, knowledge transfer/integration, social, and self-management skills.

After that, M. Martha Lengeling, Irasema Mora Pablo, and Blanca Lucía Barrios Gasca's article reports the findings of a study carried out with public school teachers of English as a foreign language in central Mexico with the purpose of exploring the processes of their socialization and identity formation. We can learn about the features of such socialization and how the teachers dealt with challenges in their teaching contexts and the program. We can also learn about how they made decisions vis-à-vis their future as teachers, forming and imagining their identity.

Next we can find the article by Turkish teachers Mehmet Firat and Harun Serpil, who compare the Internet usage of distance and on-campus pre-service teachers of language and other disciplines through a survey study. We can read about the average level of Internet usage frequency, adequacy, and technology ownership in the two preservice teacher groups.

The following three articles address issues of English language teaching in Mexico, Colombia, and New Zealand. In first place, Luz Edith Herrera Díaz and Darlene González Miy, from Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico), provide an advance of a study in progress regarding the development of the oral skill in a Basic English online course. The authors aim at uncovering the relation between the community of inquiry framework's presence and some indicators of the oral skill. Interestingly, the results indicate that the teaching presence nurtures grammar, accuracy, and vocabulary.

Then, the article entitled "The Impact of Authentic Materials and Tasks on Students' Communicative Competence at a Colombian Language School" refers to an investigation conducted at a public university, in a basic English course, by César Augusto Castillo Losada, Edgar Alirio Insuasty, and María Fernanda Jaime Osorio. Findings show that the use of authentic materials and tasks, within the framework of a pedagogical project, had an impact on students' communicative competence progress and on the teaching practices.

We close this first section with the article authored by Constanza Tolosa, Claudia Lucía Ordóñez, and Diana Carolina Guevara, who present an account of a study aimed at examining the potential of an online tandem program to enhance the foreign language learning of two groups of school-aged beginner learners, one learning English in Colombia and the other learning Spanish in New Zealand. Results comprise significant gains in foreign language writing and positive attitudinal changes toward foreign and native language learning.

In the second section, Issues from Novice Teacher Researchers, we include a study dealing with the presence of political educative issues in our journal. The article, written by Lina María Robayo Acuña and the PROFILE Editor, reports on a study aimed at exploring the topic of inclusive policies in the teaching of EFL in Colombia. The authors chose some articles by Colombian authors published in the PROFILE Journal to conduct a documentary and critical discourse analysis. Results are illustrated with extracts form the selected articles to demonstrate that some policies—mainly The National Program of Bilingualism and the basic Standards for Competences in English as a Foreign Language—evidence discriminatory and segregation attitudes in English language teaching.

The last section, Issues Based on Reflections and Innovations, features this time three articles containing issues of gender, citizenship, and teacher empowerment. First of all, Claudia Patricia Mojica and Harold Castañeda-Peña describe the design, implementation, and learning that took place in a course with an emphasis on gender and foreign language teaching in a Master's program in Colombia. This teaching and learning experience evidences the relevance of the gender category in English language teacher education and in fostering a broader social and educational perspective in teachers' practices with a gender perspective.

Next we can read a contribution by Colombian author Luzkarime Calle Díaz who analyses the potential opportunities for the development of global citizenship education in the English as a foreign language classroom. To attain that goal, the author carried out a documentary analysis of the Colombian national standards and its connection to the national citizenship competences standards and the UNESCO global citizenship education topics and learning objectives.

The last article of this edition comes from Spain. Soraya García-Sánchez and Jose Miguel Santos-Espino inform us about the upshots resulting from the production of foreign language educational videos by pre-service instructors enrolled in a Master's Degree in Secondary Education program with the purpose of linking digital technology with pedagogy by means of producing flipped classroom units adapted to the younger generation's needs.

The contributions made by the above mentioned authors tell us how PROFILE as an academic publication is always looking forward to covering a wide range of scenarios in the hopes of providing a myriad of possibilities for practitioners of English. Countless accounts of world research in EFL are possible due to our clear, fair, and timely policies.

The increasing number of submissions to our journal has made it possible to carefully select the manuscripts to be gathered in a new edition from a healthy or considerable range of topics and origins. We should highlight the authors' perseverance to offer our readership articles of high quality, based on our policies and the demands of our reviewers. Besides that, we are fully committed, as Curry and Lillis pointed out at the beginning of this editorial, to work toward greater and more equal opportunities for scholars to get published.

María Claudia Nieto Cruz
Journal Director

Melba Libia Cárdenas
Journal Editor

¹Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2013). A scholar's guide to getting published in English: Critical choices and practical strategies. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.