Dear Colleagues,
Please find below a call for papers for a special edition of the System journal to commemorate the work of Prof Stephen Bax:
Call for papers for a special edition of System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, on the work of Professor Stephen Bax.
Guest editors: Dr Michael Thomas (University of Central Lancashire) and Dr Gary Motteram (University of Manchester).
The teaching and research interests of Professor Stephen Bax (https://stephenbax.net/), a leading scholar in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) who died in November 2017, spanned a number of areas, including the normalization of digital technologies, eye tracking and learners’ cognitive processing in intertextual reading and reading tests, the social and cultural dimensions of teacher training, language syllabus design, bilingual education and discourse and genre. He is also known as the scholar who worked on a provisional decoding of the Voynich manuscript and more recently had been developing the tool Text Inspector, which developed from his work in language testing.
He was perhaps best known in the field of CALL for two papers published in System, his seminal paper, “CALL—Past, Present and Future” published in 2003, and “Making CALL work: Towards normalization”, published in 2006. For the first he was awarded the Elsevier prize for best journal article and both publications proved to be highly influential for a generation of students, practitioners and researchers around the world. He returned to the theme again in “Normalisation Revisited: The Effective Use of Technology in Language Education” in 2011 in the International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching. Other published works, including three authored monographs, marked him out as an academic who championed foreign language education, and encouraged criticality and open-ended enquiry, particularly with respect to the assumed certainties of digital education. Consequently, he was equally adept at pushing the boundaries in relation to new forms of e-research methodology, as was evident in his work on eye-tracking, testing and reading.
This special edition of System aims to commemorate Professor Bax by inviting reflections on his work and engaging in a critical dialogue with it. A title, 300 word abstract and author biographies (50-100 words) should be submitted to Michael Thomas ([log in to unmask]) and Gary Motteram ([log in to unmask]) by 31/01/2018.
Following a review of abstracts, invited papers will be required in line with the journal’s guidelines for authors (https://www.elsevier.com/journals/system/0346-251x/guide-for-authors) to a maximum of 7,000 words (not including references or appendices). We encourage the submission of abstracts on or related to the following themes of his work:
Key dates
Submission of 300 word abstracts: 31st January 2018
Notification to authors of acceptance: 15th February 2018
Submission of first draft of full papers for peer review: 15th June 2018
Final drafts due: 1st October 2018