Where Have All the Papers Gone?
Priming the Pump of Pedagogical Publishing in Europe
A workshop at CEP 2025 doi.org/nzzf, help us rank the wicked problems below in order of importance forms.office.com/e/tngB4bQhk7. We have borrowed the title of this workshop from Pete Seeger, who borrowed it from the Ukranians. Public domain picture of Seeger from Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/CeDk. Other images below from flaticon.com
Seven Wicked Problems
We've classified the wicked problems our community faces into seven broad categories
Publishing Problem
There are insufficient incentives for practitioners to publish and too many barriers to prevent publication. The mantra of “publish or perish” doesn’t apply, there are lots of good practitioners who publish very little, their work is invisible
Promotion Problem
Good teaching does not always lead to sufficient recognition and reward. Advance HE rewards like AFHEA, FHEA, SFHEA, PFHEA and NTF help but are not always recognised by promotion panels dominated by research-focused staff
Funding Problem
It can be difficult to find funding for research into pedagogy, as a relatively young field there are still lots of open questions about how to teach computing, but inadequate funding to allow investigation to take place
Disconnect Problem
Computing Education Research is sometimes too disconnected from practice (and vice versa). Definitions of what “counts” as research can be too restrictive see doi.org/h772
Priorities Problem
Administrative and teaching duties leave little or no time to publish papers, meaning that good intentions to publish, are often not realised due to higher priorities taking precedence
Metrics Problem
Good teaching is difficult to evaluate and measure, papers are often not REF-able anyway
Prestige Problem
CER lacks prestige and parity of esteem with other areas of research
Did we miss any?
Is there another class of problem we missed? See question 2 at forms.office.com/e/tngB4bQhk7