Publish with Camtree
Camtree aims to enable publication and sharing of close-to-practice educational research in formats that are accessible to the greatest number of practitioners.
As a result, we are focusing on supporting teachers to produce research reports which are short, structured pieces of writing, typically of 1800-5000 words and with a clear focus on educational practice.
Research reports may differ in their format and content to some extent, but will have the following main sections:
- Location of an inquiry in relation to practice, previous research or policy
- A clear statement of aims and purpose
- A description of a inquiry, project, innovation or initiative
- Presentation of data or other findings
- A discussion of implications for practice
Camtree provides templates for research reports. These are downloadable from the resources area as Microsoft Word documents.
Can I publish my work with Camtree?
The Camtree Digital Library is designed primarily for the publication and sharing of research reports produced by teachers involved in close-to-practice research. We don’t publish literature reviews or purely theoretical pieces of work – although if you’d like to write something about close-to-practice research or teacher inquiry as a blog post or opinion piece for the website, please do get in touch.
We’re also interested in developing resources to support teachers to do research, so if you’d like to write about a methodological innovation, or perhaps a review of research that would help teachers carry out their classroom inquiries, again, please contact us.
So, what are research reports?
Camtree research reports are structured documents typically of 1800-5000 words. They may vary according to the nature of the inquiry but will have generally have the following overall structure:
- Description of context and background, whether this is informed by practice, previous research or policy
- Motivation, focus and research questions
- An inquiry plan or design and description of what was done
- Ethical considerations and relationships
- Findings and interpretations
- Any resulting changes to practice
- Reflective evaluation
- Next steps
- References and details of any resources produced
Camtree provides templates for research reports based on different models of inquiry. These include helpful prompts and guidance.
Structured abstracts
Camtree research reports all include a structured abstract of about 300 words. Structured abstracts allow easy searching, retrieval and comparison of research reports, their contexts and findings. There is more information and advice about writing structured abstracts here.
What else can I publish?
Additional materials may be submitted to supplement research reports, including longer accounts, theses and dissertations; conference papers and presentations; research instruments (such as questionnaires, interview schedules, observation schedules and protocols); and research data (such as images, audio and video recordings, spreadsheets, and transcripts) although these will need to be anonymised – we can provide advice about this.
You may also submit lesson plans, schemes of work, curricula, or learning resources – although it is important that these are accompanied by, and described in, the research report.
Can you publish my dissertation or thesis?
We are interested in hearing from teacher trainees and students who have carried out close-to-practice research as part of their initial training programmes or a Masters’ degree. If you have completed a thesis (typically 7000 words or more at undergraduate level and often much more than this at Masters’ level), we would want to publish it along with a shorter research report with a focus on the implications of your research for practice.
We’ve developed a version of our report template specially for authors who want to write a research report based on a dissertation or thesis. This is available in the resources area.
If you have completed a PhD or EdD thesis, then we would be interested in receiving a research report with a focus on practice, although the thesis itself will probably have been archived in a university research repository. We would recommend you referring to the full thesis and providing its URL in your university repository in the text of your Camtree research report. If your university does not currently publish theses online, then get in touch with us and we may be able to help.
