Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development

Author Guidelines

Updated on: June 21, 2024

Focus and Scope

Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development is a scientific, peer-reviewed, semi-annual publication focused on sharing the results of research carried out in the field of English language teaching and learning. As such, this publication can be classified in the big areas of Language Education and Applied Linguistics. This journal accepts mainly three types of documents: research articles, articles of revision, and reflections. Research approaches can have a qualitative or mixed orientation (not purely quantitative) and they include but are not limited to, action research, narrative inquiry, discourse analysis, case studies, and so on. All topics revolving around English language teaching and learning are welcome, such as the teaching of English at various educational levels and to different populations, didactics, methodology, bilingualism, language policies, skills development, assessment and evaluation, and English for academic/specific purposes.

Sections of the Journal

Issues from Teacher Researchers: This section includes research reports (action research, case studies, narrative inquiry, etc.). Manuscripts should have an introduction, theoretical framework or literature review, method, context and participants, analysis, findings, conclusions.

Issues from Novice Teacher Researchers: This section contains manuscripts exclusively based on research conducted by new teachers as part of the monographs undertaken to get their BEd or BA degrees or for the theses to obtain a master’s degree. These manuscripts may include the tutor of the monograph or thesis as a co-author if his/her contribution in the composition of the manuscript has been significant (people who were not involved in the development of the thesis should not appear as authors of the manuscript). In this case, the main author is the one who obtained the BEd, BA, or MA degree.

Issues Based on Reflections and Innovations: This section gathers reflections about a specific topic with analytical, interpretative or critical perspectives, which are supported by different sources. Innovations include the justification, description, explanation and samples of pedagogical interventions in specific teaching fields. This section also includes literature reviews. To ensure comprehensiveness, the review should be based on, at least, 50 works.

Submitting a Manuscript

Submission, review, and publication of manuscripts in Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development (Henceforth Profile) are free of charge for authors. To be considered for publication, authors should complete the submission process via the journal OJS platform. There, the authors upload the manuscript, the submission form, and the consent form (if applicable). The process starts by registering as a user on the journal webpage (https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile).

After clicking on the “register” option at the top of the page, authors are asked to fill in the registration form. At the end of the form, authors should make sure they choose the option “Register as: Author”. This will allow authors to upload the submission. As stated in our Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement, authors must send contributions that are original (not previously published), valid (containing data that can be replicated and processed according to accepted methods), and relevant (information that advances the knowledge in the field). Parallel submission (submission of a manuscript to more than one journal at a time), plagiarism, and self-plagiarism are unacceptable practices and may result in the rejection of an article. Manuscripts by authors whose articles have been rejected because of these practices will not be considered for evaluation in future issues.

Once registered as an author, the user can start the five-step submission process (for two or more authors, one of them will be in charge of completing the submission process and registering the information of the other authors). It is important to follow each step and to upload the manuscript and all of the supplementary files as requested in the checklist for submissions. The authors' names or biographical data should not be included within the manuscript (this information is registered in the submission form).

Important: Profile does not accept multiple submissions from the same author (or coauthor). Authors must wait until an editorial decision has been made on their active submission before submitting a new one.

Manuscript Format

The manuscript should be saved in single-column format, double-spaced as a Word document, in Times New Roman 12, and have margins of three centimeters. Block quotations and samples taken from data should be in Times New Roman 10 and indented at 1.25 centimeters. All pages of the manuscript should be numbered at the top. The first line of every paragraph should be indented at 1.25 centimeters (except for the abstracts, block quotations, titles, headings, and tables and figures titles). Titles and subtitles should be used judiciously to clearly identify the different sections and subsections of the manuscript. Titles should not be labelled with numbers or letters, but following the levels of heading recommended by APA:

First Level Heading Centered

Second Level Heading Flush Left (Bold)

Third Level Heading Flush Left (Bold Italic)

     Fourth Level Heading. Indented and with text following the period.

Abstract

Manuscripts should contain abstracts of no more than 120 words and should include keywords (no more than five). Abbreviations and references in the abstract should be avoided. A good abstract offers a succinct account of the problem, methods, findings, and conclusions of the study. The abstract and the keywords should be in both Spanish and English.

Keywords

Keywords should be organized in alphabetical order. To guarantee the impact of the keywords, authors are requested to contrast them with a thesaurus (two samples of online, free access thesauruses are those by UNESCO and ERIC.) Similarly, the complete bibliographic information for each citation must be included in the list of references following the American Psychological Association (APA) Style, 7th Edition (some samples of references are given below).

Appendices, Excerpts, and Quotes

Excerpts, appendices, quotes, and other long pieces of information should be translated into English, indicating in a footnote the original language and that the translation was made for publication purposes. The original language of excerpts can be kept only when it is necessary for the objectives of the study; in this case, an English translation should also be provided. When the samples from participants are just texts, these should be transcribed. Text should never be pasted as an image (unless the characteristics of the study require it).

All quoted material must be cited as such in the text. All references cited in the text must be in the list of references, and all works included in the references section must be cited in the text. Authors should only include the works that were consulted during the development of the study and the composition of the manuscript, avoiding the excessive use of secondary sources. Material that is cited within an excerpt or a direct quotation (except when such material is also a primary source in the manuscript) should not be included in the list of references.

Besides the guidelines included here, manuscripts are expected to follow the standards of high-quality academic papers as regards structure, clarity of language, and formal style. Manuscripts lacking these basic elements will not be included in the process of evaluation.

Number of Words

Papers cannot exceed 8,000 words, including the abstracts, keywords, references, appendices, footnotes, authors' biodata, and acknowledgments (the last two should only appear in the submission form, not in the manuscript). Footnotes should appear on the same page, not at the end of the document. The number of words should be indicated at the end of the article. The title of the manuscript should have a maximum of 13 words.

Graphics, Tables, and Figures

When possible, authors should design the figures or graphs directly in Microsoft Word or Excel. Regarding images (photographs, pictures), these should be inserted in the manuscript, but authors should send them as independent files as well and with high resolution in a standard graphic format (e.g., JPG, PNG). Inside the manuscript, lower-resolution versions can be pasted (black and white versions will be used in print). Important: authors are required to present the necessary authorization to reproduce images that are copyrighted. In this case, the permission should be uploaded as a supplementary file.

Tables should be created in Microsoft Word (not pasted as images, because tables are included in the word-count of the document). Appendices, figures, and tables should include a title. They should be centered and follow these models:

Table 1. Ways of Doing Compositions

Figure 2. Results of the Diagnostic Survey

Appendix A: Lesson Plan Sample

The manuscript should be written in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these) with the grammar, punctuation, and style adequate for academic texts. Italics are not to be used for expressions of Latin origin; for example, in vivo, et al., per se.

Ethical Issues

One of the requirements for the publication of articles about teaching or research experiences in which others have participated is to have a consent form signed by them or their parents—if they are under 18—to authorize the use of the information in the publication. If the article contains information provided by participants, authors should obtain consent forms and send to the editor a sample of the form used, together with the manuscript. Profile does not provide the forms; they are the ones designed by the teacher-researchers while they do their projects. Participants should be identified using consistent labels or pseudonyms (e.g., Participant 1, Student 4) to maintain anonymity.

If acknowledgments are included, these should be written in a short paragraph of no more than 100 words at the end of the submission form (not in the manuscript).

Conflicts of interest

As stated in our Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement, authors must disclose any potential conflict of interest that may arise during the evaluation of their manuscript. Authors are requested to provide information about the sources that funded their study.

Plagiarism and self-citation

Self-citation or similarity with other sources should not be over 15% of all of the material quoted throughout the text. Plagiarism occurs when the authors do not give proper credit in the manuscript to the work of others. Similarly, self-plagiarism is the failure of the authors to correctly cite their own previous work (if this is used within the article), and has the same consequences as in plagiarism cases. Manuscripts will be screened with a similarity-detector software at two points: When they are first submitted to the journal, and after the evaluation process is finished and the reviewers recommend publication.

Profile will reject papers with evidence of plagiarism, and its decision will be final. Manuscripts by authors whose articles have been rejected because of plagiarism will not be considered for evaluation in future issues.

Submission form

Authors should fill in and upload the submission form, which contains the following: title of the article (in both English and Spanish; the title in English with a maximum of 13 words), author’s(s’) name(s), ORCiD, institution where the author(s) worked when the study was carried out, address, a short biographical statement (biodata) of no more than 50 words per author, and the date or period of time the document was written. The way the author's name is written in the biodata (pen name) is the one that will be followed once the article is published. For multiple authors, the order in which they are mentioned in the biodata will also correspond to the order in the published article (order of authorship). The authors should also indicate if the paper presents the results of a project, including the project name or code number (if there is one) and the name of the institution that sponsored the project. Similarly, if the paper is based on an unpublished thesis or dissertation, authors should clarify this in a note and indicate the kind of thesis work (undergraduate, master's, doctoral dissertation), the degree obtained, and the university that granted such degree (people who were not involved in the development of the thesis should not appear as authors of the manuscript). Additionally, the authors must include a statement indicating that the article has not been simultaneously submitted to another publication and that it has not already been published elsewhere.

The submission form must contain the list and the order of authorship approved by all authors. Modifications to the list or the order of authors are not allowed after submission. Otherwise, the manuscript will be withdrawn from the editorial process and the authors should present it as a new submission.

All the requirements mentioned above will be checked, and no evaluation will start until all of them are met. Delay in complying with our policies will have an impact on the time required for the evaluation process.

References

The works cited in the text and the list of references should follow the guidelines of the APA Style (7th edition). The list of references is arranged in hanging indentation (the first line of each reference is flush left and subsequent lines are indented.) Only sources that can be accessed or recovered in any way (even when access is restricted) should appear on the reference list. Sources that cannot be recovered by the reader should be treated as personal communications.

The following samples illustrate some common cases. For more examples, please check the APA Style website (https://apastyle.apa.org/) or our latest issue, in its electronic version, on our website (https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile).

Book

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4^th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Bergman Ramos, Trans.). Bloomsbury. (Original work published 1968)

In-text citation: narrative: Freire (1968/2000), parenthetical: (Freire, 1968/2000)

Ministerio de Educación Nacional. (n.d.). Lineamientos curriculares para el área de idiomas extranjeros en la educación básica y media. https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-339975_recurso_7.pdf

Chapter in an Edited Book

Wright, T. (2012). Managing the classroom. In A. Burns & J. C. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to pedagogy and practice in second language teaching (pp. 60–67). Cambridge University Press.

Conference Session or Paper Presentation

Inbar-Lourie, O. (2017, July 17–21). Language assessment literacies and the language testing community: A mid-life identity crisis? [Conference session]. 39th Language Testing Research Colloquium, Bogotá, Colombia. https://www.iltaonline.com/page/2017InvitedPlenaries

Proceedings Published in Book Form

Bailey, K. M. (2004). Plenary: Language teaching journals and reflective teaching. In A. Pulverness (Ed.), IATEFL 2003 Brighton Conference Selections (pp. 80–91). International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.

Entry in a Dictionary

Provide a retrieval date for sources from the Internet that are likely to be continuously updated or that are meant to change over time.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Feedback. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feedback

Journal Article

Mesa Villa, C. P., Gómez-Giraldo, J. S., & Arango Montes, R. (2020). Becoming language teacher-researchers in a research seedbed. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 22(1), 159–173. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v22n1.78806

In-text citation: narrative: Mesa Villa et al. (2020), parenthetical: (Mesa Villa et al., 2020)

Dissertations and Thesis

Unpublished dissertations or theses are only available in print in an institution’s library.

Ariza, A. (2004). EFL undergraduate students’ understanding of autonomy and their reflection in their learning process [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas.

Risto, A. (2014). The impact of texting and social media on students’ academic writing skills (Publication No. 3683242) [Doctoral dissertation, Tennessee State University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Webpage on a Website

A URL shortener may be used for long or complex URLs (see first example below). If you want to refer to a complete website, do so in text (there is no need to add a reference entry), for instance: the New York Public Library website (https://www.nypl.org/). For specific pages within a website, you have to provide a reference entry:

Sigee, R. (2020, January 16). Are authentic accents important in film and TV? BBC. https://bbc.in/2uBtygp

UNICEF. (n.d.). Education under attack. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://www.unicef.org/education-under-attack

Evaluation and Publication

Each new submission is initially reviewed by the editor to determine the suitability of a manuscript and to identify whether all the requirements have been met (at this point the manuscript is also screened with a similarity-detection software to identify the percentage of similarity with other sources).

The approved manuscripts go through a double blind peer-review process that takes four to five months, provided that there are no unexpected delays. Initially, two external reviewers will be assigned to each manuscript. Reviewers’ names will not be made available to authors under any circumstances. Similarly, the authors' identities are concealed from reviewers during the evaluation process. Authors should wait approximately four to five months until notification of a decision by the editor. If an article is accepted after having been read by at least two external reviewers, authors should be ready to revise it if necessary and to meet the deadlines established by the editor to complete the editing processes. The Profile editor reserves the right to make editorial changes in the manuscripts recommended for publication for the purpose of clarity, concision, or style.

Reviewers will have five weeks to prepare their feedback and they can give one of three possible recommendations after reviewing a manuscript: (a) recommended for publication, (b) revise and resubmit, or (c) rejected. If the concepts from the two reviewers are at odds, the following scenarios may arise:

Recommended for publication + Revise and resubmit = The manuscript will be sent to the author for revision and resubmission.

Rejected + Revise and resubmit = The manuscript will be rejected.

Recommended for publication + Rejected = The article will be sent to a third reviewer. Only the two concepts that are similar at the end of the review will be taken into account to reach a final decision.

If major changes are required by the reviewers or by the editor, the article will be returned to you for amending, indicating that revision and resubmission are required. The improved version should be submitted within three weeks. After this period, the article will be regarded as a new submission.

The revised version of the manuscript should be sent to the editor together with a cover letter. It should include the authors’ explanations of how they addressed (or did not address) the reviewers’ comments. The resubmission will then be submitted to a new round of evaluation. Once the manuscript has been recommended for publication by both reviewers, it will be reviewed by the Editorial Committee to reach a final decision.

The Editorial Committee will take into account the reviewers' recommendations and will decide whether the article can be published. The date of publication will depend upon the amount of time taken for revision and resubmission.

Once the article is accepted, the edited version will be sent to the authors for approval. Upon publication, authors will receive a PDF copy of their articles. Profile does not provide printed versions of the article or of the complete issue to authors.

Copyright

Once an article is accepted, the authors fill in a nonexclusive publication license form authorizing the reproduction of the full text on the Internet and in any other source sponsored by Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Authors retain the intellectual property of their manuscripts with the following restriction: first publication is granted to the Profile journal.

If authors wish to use the article again in a publication written by them or in an edited work, they can do so provided that its original publication in the Profile journal is acknowledged.

Sending Contributions

We accept submissions all year round, and manuscripts are reviewed in order of arrival. Date of publication of a manuscript, if accepted, depends on the duration of the peer review process which lasts, at least, four months.