How to Submit
Field Educator is dedicated to the exchange of knowledge between field educators in academia and in the practice community. Submissions are encouraged from field directors, field liaisons, field instructors, and teaching faculty, as well as practice educators from other countries and practitioners from other disciplines that rely on internships as part of professional education. Submissions should be focused, well organized, and editorially sound.
General Submission Guidelines
- Manuscripts should be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word format to [email protected].
- Submissions must be prepared according to the standards of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition).
- Manuscripts submitted to Field Educator should not have been published with significantly similar content in another journal.
- Manuscripts should be double-spaced with margins of at least one inch on all sides.
- Manuscript pages should be numbered consecutively throughout the paper.
- Tables and figures should be cited in the text and then included at the end of the manuscript.
- A short, descriptive title should appear above each table, with any footnotes identified below.
- Figures should be labeled.
- Captions should be double-spaced.
- Authors must clearly indicate in their correspondence the specific section for which they are submitting the manuscript. See below for instructions specific to each section.
Field Scholar
Field Scholar presents formal, scholarly articles about practice, theory, and research on a variety of subjects. All papers accepted for the Field Scholar section will be eligible to win the $500 Excellence in Field Education Scholarship Award. (Please see specific information regarding the award at the end of this page.)
Possible types of papers include:
- Research focus: A paper reporting on original research, based on the systematic collection and analysis of the data or facts, with relevance to some aspect of field education.
- Theory focus: A paper reflecting upon and referencing one or more bodies of literature or systems of thought, and including implications for field education.
- Practice focus: A paper analyzing and describing innovative or exemplary practices or programs. This may take the form of a case study, narrative, or technical report. The outcomes may be improved frameworks, concepts, understandings, or structures, with relevance to field education.
Authors are encouraged to describe the evidence base for their content and to include a comprehensive literature review. Articles that are primarily descriptive reports of programs should be considered for submission to the Practice Digest section.
Submissions to the Field Scholar section will be reviewed for rigor and relevance by members of a panel of noted field educators from the US and abroad; the list of consulting editors can be found in About Us.
Field Scholar Submission Guidelines
- Articles should be 10 to 25 pages in length, excluding references, tables, or figures.
- The article must be summarized in an abstract of not more than 100 words with three to five keywords for database indexing listed at the bottom of the abstract page.
- The manuscript text (including abstract), figures, and tables should be compiled and emailed as one file.
- To facilitate anonymous review, only the article title should appear on the first page of the manuscript.
- A cover page should be submitted as a separate file from the manuscript and include the title of the paper and professional titles and mailing and e-mail addresses of all authors.
- The manuscript should be made anonymous with all references to authors’ identities removed.
- Please refer to the General Submission Guidelines above.
Practice Digest
In addition to manuscripts for the Field Scholar section, Field Educator accepts manuscripts for the Practice Digest section. Practice Digest features reports on innovative approaches to field education curriculum, field instruction, and organizational models for delivering and managing field education programs.
Practice Digest submissions are reviewed by Field Educator editorial staff and are not reviewed by external reviewers. Students, field instructors, social work faculty, and field liaisons are encouraged to submit articles to Practice Digest.
Practice Digest Submission Guidelines
- Submissions should not exceed 10 pages excluding tables, charts, or references.
- Practice Digest manuscripts should be written in the same clear, scholarly style as Field Scholar submissions.
- Please refer to the General Submission Guidelines above.
Excellence in Field Education Scholarship Award
The Simmons School of Social Work and the Field Educator sponsor an annual award to promote excellence in field education scholarship. A $500 prize will be awarded for an outstanding paper on social work field education. The winning paper will be announced at the Annual Program Meeting (APM) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and will be published in the Field Educator. All entries must meet the submission guidelines for the Field Scholar section of the Field Educator.
In addition, papers will be evaluated against the following criteria:
- demonstrates rigor and relevance in addressing an important issue regarding field education
- contributes to the advancement of understanding and innovation in field education
Eligibility
Papers must be submitted and accepted to the Field Scholar section of the Field Educator for consideration. Papers must be original manuscripts not previously published or submitted to other publications while under consideration by the jury. See above for submission guidelines for Field Scholar articles.