Submissions

Author Guidelines

Basic Guidelines

The editorial practices of Critical Education guided by core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics, this includes transparency on complaints and appeals, authorship and contributorship, complaints and appeals, conflicts of interest/competing interests, data and reproducibility, ethical oversight, intellectual property, journal management, peer review processes, and post-publication discussions and corrections. 

There are no fees or charges for submission, manuscript processing or publishing. 

Critical Education typically reviews manuscripts that are between 4,000 and 8,000 words in length.

Manuscripts are accepted for review via the journal's web site as a Word (.docx) or RTF document.

Manuscripts should be original, unpublished, and not under review by another journal or publisher.

The text of the article should be double-spaced; use Times New Roman 12-point font; employ italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables should be placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. Please do not include any headers or footers in your document.

References and in-text citiations should be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition, 2020.

Critical Education has an international readership, so please avoid the use of terms that might be meaningful only to a local or national audience, or provide a clear explanation where this is unavoidable.

Submissions should include a 150 word abstract and relevant keywords.

Images should be supplied as JPEG with a minimum resolution of 300 DPI.

Critical Education generally follows the latest publication guidelines of the American Psychological Association. The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) is an excellent reference on academic writing and is one of the best open access guides for APA style and formatting.[1]

The editors encourage Critical Education authors to be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of APA style including stylistics such as guidelines on point of view, clarity, and word choice as well as things to avoid (e.g., guidelines for avoiding bias in language concerning gender, race, disability, and sexuality).

General Keyboarding Instructions

Do not format text by using hard returns, the space bar, or multiple indents/tabs.

Do not add extra hard returns (spaces) between paragraphs and do not insert extra hard returns between items in the reference list.

Whenever possible use the formatting functions available in Microsoft Word.

Document margins. Left, right, top, and bottom margins should be 2.54 cm / 1 inch.

Line Spacing. Set the line spacing for your file to “double” for all content, including reference entries and text extracts. Do not insert extra spaces between paragraphs.

Font/Typeface. Use Times New Roman 12-point size font, with the exception of footnote text, which should be Times New Roman 10-point font. Extracts, epigraphs, and headings should all appear in the manuscript with the same font and point size. In rare cases, you may need to use a different font to visually set apart text. If so, please provide an example and explanation of your intention.

Letterspacing. Only use one space between sentences, not two.

Indents. Please use tabs, not the spacebar, when indenting. Indent the first line of a new paragraph 1.27 cm / .5 inch.

Quotes. Less than 40 words in an “in line quote.”

Place direct quotations that are 40 words, or longer, in a free-standing block of typewritten lines, and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, indented 1/2 inch [2.54 cm] from the left margin, i.e., in the same place you would begin a new paragraph. Type the entire quotation on the new margin, and indent the first line of any subsequent paragraph within the quotation 1/2 inch from the new margin. Maintain double-spacing throughout. The parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark. (Paiz et al., 2013, Long quotations, para. 1)

To make a block quote create a new paragraph, maintain double spacing, highlight the quote and indent using the Microsoft Word "increase indent" tool bar symbol . Purdue OWL provides additional examples of how to format in-text citations for short and long quotations.

Tables. Use Microsoft Word's Insert Table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Footnotes. Critical Education does not encourage the use of footnotes, but if explanatory notes are necessary for your article please use Microsoft Word’s Insert Footnote function. Format footnotes to appear at the bottom of the page, numbered continuously throughout the manuscript using Arabic numerals. [2]

Headings

APA Publication Manual identifies five levels of headings, however, Critical Education encourages authors to use a maximum of three heading levels. Always use the headings in order, beginning with heading level 1. The article title is not a heading.

                              Level 1 Heading is Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase
Level 2 Heading is Left-Aligned, Boldface Uppercase and Lowercase
     Level 3 heading is indented, boldface, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period.

In-Text Citations

Follow the author-date method of in-text citation, which means that the author’s last name and the year of publication appear in the text, for example (Freeman, 2014). Page numbers in an in-text citation are only necessary for direct quotes. All sources cited in the text of the manuscript must appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.

References

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each in-text citation should be listed in the Reference section. See Purdue OWL for the basic rules of APA reference formatting and an extensive list of examples of how to cite various print, electronic, and non-print sources. To create and edit hyperlinks in Microsoft Word, highlight the url (the link) then hold “command” key + k.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal Articles:

Leigh, P. R., & Allen, B. L. (2012). A portrait of black leadership during racial school segregation. Critical Education, 3(4), 1-28. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182268

Leonardo, Z. (2004). Critical social theory and transformative knowledge: The functions of criticism in quality education. Educational Researcher, 33(6), 11-18. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X033006011

Authored Book:

Au, W. (2012). Critical curriculum studies: Education, consciousness, and the politics of knowing. Routledge.

Edited Book:

Hill, D., McLaren, P., Cole, M., & Rikowski, G. (Eds.). (2003). Marxism against postmodernism in educational theory. Lexington Books.

Chapter in an Edited Book:

Sensoy, Ö. (2013). Picturing oppression: Seventh graders’ photo essays on racism, classism, and sexism. In T. Kress (Ed.). Using critical research for educational and social change (pp. 63-82). State University of New York Press.