Busy TAA People: TAA Member Margarita Huerta’s Work Reaches the 1,000 Mark for Citations

TAA member Margarita Huerta, PhD, writer and Founder of Real Academics, reached the 1,000 mark for citations on her Google Scholar profile on August 25, 2023.

Her top three most cited articles (out of 20 articles tracked by Google) include:

  • “Graduate students as academic writers: writing anxiety, self-efficacy and emotional intelligence” (2017), M Huerta, P Goodson, M Beigi, D Chlup, Higher Education Research & Development, 36 (4), 716-729. (205 citations)
  • “The effect of an instructional intervention on middle school English learners’ science and English reading achievement” (2012), R Lara‐Alecio, F Tong, BJ Irby, C Guerrero, M Huerta, Y Fan, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 49 (8), 987-1011. (184 citations)
  • “Connecting literacy and science to increase achievement for English language learners” (2010), M Huerta, J Jackson, Early Childhood Education Journal, 38, 205-211. (62 citations)

Don’t Kill Your Chance with a Publisher By Making This Mistake

Gregory J. Privitera, PhD, Professor of Psychology at St. Bonaventure University and author of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (3e), Essential Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (2e), and Research Methods for the Behavioral Sciences (3e), said that in his experience, one big way to kill/challenge a chance with a publisher is to come to them with a fully written book: “At least in the textbook publishing space, editors want room for the development of a project. So, they prefer a few sample chapters and a proposal, over a fully written book–with some exceptions, such as if that book was published already, but the author is ‘shopping’ for a new publisher to print the book.”

Incorporating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into Textbooks

The need to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) extends to the materials we use to teach students. For authors, it can be tempting to relegate DEI discussions to feature boxes or individual chapters in a textbook—“add-on” features that may unintentionally convey exceptionalism. DEI should be as much a part of a manuscript as proper sentence structure and organization; it should exist within and throughout the narrative and encompass how the reader experiences the text, including visuals and accessibility. It is our responsibility to accurately reflect our diverse world.

2023 TAA Council Elections – Cast Your Vote

Six candidates are running for four open positions on the TAA Council, the association’s governing board. Terms begin July 1, 2023.

Members received an email with a link to the ballot on February 21. To be eligible to vote, individuals must be members in good standing. If you are a TAA member and cannot vote electronically, contact Kim Pawlak at Kim.Pawlak@TAAonline.net or (507) 459-1363 to request a paper ballot. The deadline for voting is Friday, March 17.

Dione Taylor

“I would like to continue my support of TAA with service as the next Vice President/President-Elect, as this organization continues to invite new and ongoing members of the textbook and academic authors community to join with us for this mutually beneficial and rewarding purpose.” – Dione Taylor, Running for Vice President/President-Elect

Confronting the anxiety of academic writing: Tackling the intellectual and practical difficulties

The first article in this series, based on Rachael Cayley’s October 19, 2022 TAA webinar, “Confronting the Anxiety of Academic Writing”, covered the concerns of writing product and writing process and how they are so deeply rooted that they start to feel inevitable.

In this second article, we discuss some of the ways that Cayley suggests tackling the intellectual and practical difficulties associated with writing. To tackle the intellectual difficulties, she says, you need to reconceptualize writing: “Writing is not a simple matter of writing up something that has already been created. Prior to writing, for most of us, there’s not much there. And that creative process—the process of getting words out of our inchoate minds and on to the page—is an intensely difficult one. No matter how much underlying research, or note taking, or outlining, or thinking you may have done.”