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Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

Audience

The readership of LAJM consists of Elementary, Secondary, and College-level English educators. It has a print run of 300 but reaches thousands more through digital distribution via Scholarworks.

Formatting Requirements

  • Articles should be submitted in APA format. Please see the Purdue Online Writing Lab for APA citation rules.
  • Do not include a separate title page or abstract. Do suggest a title for your work.
  • Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers.
  • Do not use footnotes.
  • Submit your file as a single document (Word or PDF) with figures, tables, and appendices included in the document. Figures, tables, and appendices may be altered or omitted to fit the layout. In general, the journal will print 2-3 images or figures per article. In preparing figures and images, note that the LAJM is printed in full color.
  • Please use one-inch margins, Times New Roman 11-12 point font, including figures, tables, and appendices. Please double-space your article, including long block quotations. Do not add additional spaces between paragraphs.
  • Please include only high-resolution images in your document. If images are copyrighted, please obtain the permission of the original creator and include his or her name. If images are too large for submission, please contact the editors.
  • Indicate subheaders in your manuscript with boldface, Times New Roman, 11-12. Do not use a different font face or a larger size.
  • Typical LAJM articles are between 3500-5000 words. Manuscripts that fall outside of these parameters will likely be rejected.

Style Preferences

  • Titles: please italicize, rather than underline, whenever necessary.
  • Dashes: please use em dashes (—) with no additional spaces between dashes and words.
  • Hyperlinks: Please do not include hyperlinks or email addresses within the body of your article. These can be added to the reference list if necessary.

Citations and References

  • All in-text citations and references must adhere to APA formatting style. Manuscripts that do not follow this format will be rejected.
  • Online sources: whenever possible, use the print citation rather than the online citation. When referring to exclusively online content, please shorten the URL to its most basic information.
  • When in doubt, please use Google Scholar to provide the proper APA citation.

Article Strands

LAJM uses topical headers to categorize its content. These strands include the following:

Methods

The Methods strand includes articles by English Education professors and graduate students. Methods articles typically detail practical strategies for preparing language arts and English pre-service teachers within the context of university methods courses programs. Methods articles draw on current research and scholarship but are not the result of methodological inquiry and analysis. Pseudonyms should be used to disguise the identity of students and their schools.

Kia Jane Richmond. Using Literature to Confront the Stigma of Mental Illness, Teach Empathy, and Break Stereotypes (LAJM 30.1, Fall 2014).

Practice

The Practice strand includes articles written by practicing K-12 ELA and English teachers. Written from the classroom teacher’s perspective, these articles typically retell successful strategies for engaging K-12 students. Practice articles typically rely less on research but may draw on practitioner texts such as The Book Whisperer. Student voices are featured heavily, but teachers should take care to use pseudonyms for their students, colleagues, administrators, and schools.

Joseph Haughey. “As Palpable as This Which Now I Draw”: Getting Graphic with Macbeth (LAJM 29.1, Fall 2013).

Research

The Research strand includes works of original research conducted by English educators at the university or two-year level. The LAJM favors qualitative, classroom-based, and teacher-directed research that adheres to professional standards. Articles should follow conventional research format.

Samantha Caughlin and Ellen Cushman. Teaching Preservice Teachers to Teach Diverse Learners: A Pilot Study. (LAJM 28.2, Spring 2013)

Critical Pedagogy

The Critical Pedagogy strand includes articles that are explicitly political in their intent. With the goal of exposing or righting social injustice, Critical Pedagogy articles attempt to reveal the oppressive ideologies that are embedded in the word and in the world, especially in the language and structure of our educational institutions. Authors seek to apply the critical theory of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Henry Giroux, and other key figures to the K-12 and or university classroom. Articles are typically provocative in tone and practical in substance.

Greg Shafer. Language, Hegemony, and LGBT Rights (LAJM 30.2, Spring 2015)

Narrative

The Narrative strand includes articles that are first-person accounts of the teaching life. They may draw on some research or scholarship, but their intent is to tell a compelling individual story centered on students and classrooms. The lessons of the narrative may be applied to classroom practice, but this application is implicit. The narrative strand does not include works of original fiction, which are described below.

Kristin E. Smith Beyond Proving It (LAJM 34.2, Spring 2019)

Mitchell Nobis. If We Are to Believe in America (LAJM 34.1, Fall 2018)

Criticism

The Criticism strand includes articles that focus specifically on a literary text(s) or author(s). These articles draw on contemporary critical theory and do not aim for classroom application, though some connections to teaching and learning may be evident.

Robert Rozema. The Problem of Autism in Young Adult Fiction (LAJM 30.1, Fall 2014).

Review

The review strand includes articles that evaluate current works of fiction, non-fiction, or scholarship that are related to the English education field. Reviews are less in-depth than the articles in the Criticism strand. Reviewers may cover multiple or single works.

Sierra Holmes. Finding Their Place: Location and Identity in Young Adult Fiction (LAJM 29.2, Spring 2014).

Fiction, Memoir, and other original creative work

These strands include original creative works that compliment the theme of the issue. Such works are told from a non-teacherly point of view and are largely personal in nature. Works in this strand are readily classified into existing categories for creative work and may be excerpted from longer works. These run at the end of the issue without the usual accompanying academic headers and bylines.

Sufen Lai. House of Books (LAJM 29.2, Spring 2014)

Undergraduate

The Undergraduate strand is reserved for outstanding articles written by undergraduates. Undergraduate articles must always be solicited by the editor (no unsolicited undergraduate submissions allowed) and may fall into any of the above strands, excluding Methods.

Nicole Willekes. Disrupting the Flow: The Detrimental Effects of Accelerated Reader on Student Motivation (LAJM 29.2, Spring 2014).

Other Preferences

  • While LAJM encourages collaborative authorship, manuscripts submitted by more than three authors can be unwieldy to credit and cite. Any authors beyond three may be treated as contributors rather than authors.
  • Please do not submit unedited pieces of dissertations, which will be rejected out of hand.