Dear NCTE Colleagues,
We (Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, Peter Smagorinsky, and Michael W. Smith) are writing in our role
as the co-chairs of the L. Ramon Veal Seminar, held at the Fall NCTE Convention. The Veal
Seminar is scheduled for Washington, D.C. in its traditional slot of Sunday, 8:30-9:45 AM. The
L. Ramon Veal Seminar was created in honor of University of Georgia English Education
professor L. Ramon Veal through a gift from his family following his death in 1984, following
his career at UGA from 1964-1983.
The L. Ramon Veal Research Roundtable allows early-career researchers, graduate students, and
teacher-researchers to submit research papers for review by mentors who will provide
constructive feedback to these often new researchers in the field.
The session works as follows:
1. Participants submit a description of their research to the committee chairs prior to the Fall
Convention. This proposal includes a wish-list of possible mentors for the research.
(Note: The instructions for submitting proposals are on the following page of this
announcement.)
2. The chairs review the proposals and make the best possible match between the participant
and a mentor from the wish-list or, if none are available, another appropriate experienced
researcher.
3. Each participant sends his or her mentor a manuscript at least one month before the Fall
Convention.
4. Prior to the Fall Convention, the participant and mentor are encouraged to establish their
relationship and begin the mentorship process.
5. On Sunday morning of the Fall Convention, the Veal Seminar is convened, with each
participant-mentor pair having an opportunity to meet and talk.
6. Relationships established through the Veal Seminar may extend as far beyond the NCTE
Convention as individual participants desire.
Historically, the Veal Seminar has focused on university-based research, often conducted as
dissertations. While we retain this strand, Cindy O’Donnell-Allen will chair a section that is
dedicated solely to teacher-researchers conducting any sort of inquiry into their teaching, their
students, their communities, their careers, and other topics of practitioner inquiry. Peter and
Michael will manage the traditional section focused on university-based research. We are
making this distinction to promote teacher-research and do not see the two categories as
exclusive or hierarchical. We mainly distinguish teacher-research because it often is viewed as
outside the purview of NCTE research, a problem we hope to address through the Veal Seminar.
Those who are doing research in their classrooms, but doing so while meeting university
research requirements, are free to choose which section of the Seminar to which to submit their
proposal.
Instructions for Submitting a Research Proposal to the Veal Seminar
Submit your proposal by September 1, 2014!!!!!
Please TYPE in the following information:
Page 1: Cover Page
Name:
Current Position:
Affiliation and mailing address:
Email:
Skype address:
Category: Teacher-Research or University-based Research
Mentor Wish List: Please list 5-10 people as your Veal Seminar Mentor Wish List; from this
group, we will attempt to make the best available match. Keep in mind that it’s possible that the
people you name will also be requested by other applicants, and so we cannot guarantee that
everyone will get his or her top choice. Also, please make sure to list people who are likely to
attend the NCTE conference. If you list 10 Australians and Europeans, you may end up with no
one available from your list. So be realistic in terms of people’s likelihood of attending the
conference when making your wish list. If possible, please provide an email address for each
person on your list, which will save us time in making matches.
If you had a mentor from a previous year and if you and that mentor agree to continue that
relationship for the 2014 Veal Seminar, please indicate here that you have secured that
agreement.
Pages 2-7: Proposal
Abstract: Provide an abstract of your study, limited to about 100 words
In six pages or fewer (excluding references), describe your research. Traditionally, such accounts
include (a) a Problem Statement or motivation for conducting the study; (b) a Theoretical
Framework or Literature Review; (c) an account of the Research Method; (d) A sketch of the
Findings or Results; (e) a Summary or Concluding statement. For work in progress, any of these
sections may be modified to suit the current rate of completion of the study. For teacherresearchers, “the story of the question”—that is, a narrative that provides the backdrop for
conducting the research—may substitute for the Problem Statement and/or Theoretical
Framework/Literature Review.
Reader Directions: Please provide some direction for your readers regarding the kind of help you
want in terms of where you are with your research. In particular, help your reader understand
your goals for conducting the research and how feedback can help you reach your goals.
Please send all inquiries to the Veal Seminar co-chairs:
Teacher-Research Strand: Cindy O’Donnell-Allen (Cindy.Odonnell-Allen@ColoState.EDU)
University-based Research Strand: Peter Smagorinsky (smago@uga.edu) and Michael W. Smith
(mwsmith@temple.edu)
History of the L. Ramon Veal Seminar
The origins of the Veal Seminar occurred in the 1970s when several people informally gathered
in a “rump seminar,” i.e., a gathering tangential to the main event, typically in an empty
conference room. This event evolved in 1975 into an invited colloquium, the Seminar on
Research in Language, a full-day session at the NCTE Spring Conference. Past chair Marie
Nelson describes the growth of the session as follows: “We got the Standing Committee on
Research to give the seminar their half-day program slot which was not being used at CEE. It
grew larger once we put it in the program. I chaired the seminar for several years after that. At
some point I asked the CEE executive committee—on which several seminar regulars served—to
co-sponsor the seminar with the research committee. They did so and it became an all-day
session again and from then on it was a Conference Highlight for many years, even after CEE
merged with the secondary and elementary conferences.”
Initially it consisted of discussions among faculty members who brought doctoral students with
them, but it was not until later that it evolved into an opportunity for those students to share their
dissertation research. At the Spring Conference in approximately 1983, a number of Ramon’s
friends, aware of his failing health, proposed the change of the title of the seminar to honor him.
The list of founding coordinators includes Ken Kantor, John Mayer, Rita Brouse, Bill Smith,
Steve Koziol, Dan Kirby, Marie Nelson (a student of Ramon's), and Linda Miller-Cleary, all of
whom advocated strongly to maintain the Seminar as a full-day event, and to keep its spirit alive.
The seminar format provided for students to submit a brief description of their work ahead of
time. At the seminar they had 15 minutes to present, and then 10 minutes to discuss, their
research. The seminar provided participants with a round robin format with everyone getting
feedback from everyone else. At the end, the person handling the seminar that year had to
summarize the discussion and present individual awards (mostly funny) to various participants
based on their contribution to the seminar. The meeting then typically continued in a bar.
One especially important contribution of the Seminar was its support for those who were doing
ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research in the late 1970's and 1980's. Ken Kantor
served as the Chair of the NCTE Committee on Research, and witnessed a growing recognition
of qualitative studies, notably in the NCTE Award for Promising Research. He reports that “I
myself have been fortunate to have worked at institutions at which this kind of scholarship has
been valued, but I know that there were, and continue to be, many colleges and universities in
which an empiricist and positivist bias predominates, making it difficult for qualitative
researchers to gain the support they need. It would be revealing, I think, to construct a Veal
Seminar ‘family tree,’ representing a few generations of exemplary teacher educators and
scholars in our field. I'm reminded here too of Janet Emig's essay ‘The Tacit Tradition,' in which
she urged us to honor our intellectual ancestors (Janet being certainly one of those role models
for me).”
For financial reasons, NCTE cancelled the Spring Conference in 2002. The Veal Seminar in its
whole-day format ended along with the Spring Conference and was revived in 2004 as a 90minute session at the annual Fall Convention. In its present form, the Veale Roundtable, which is
sponsored by CEE, serves as a writers’ workshop for researchers. Experienced researchers, grad
students, and teacher researchers are invited to submit drafts of papers, proposals, or research-inprogress along with questions that serve to direct readers’ attention. Participants are grouped at
tables with a senior scholar familiar with the table’s thematic topic, and research roundtable
participants give and receive feedback on submissions. The research roundtable is characterized
by friendly yet extremely professional interactions from participants offering a variety of
perspectives.
The Seminar was originally accompanied by a rock and roll party, first held in 1982. It was very
informal and organized by the group. Later it was formalized by NCTE as a sock-hop with Ken
Kantor, known as Kenny the K, as DJ driven by his extensive 45 record collection that he
brought with him to the conference. Ken reports, “As for the sock hop, I believe that idea did
arise though our informal connections at the Seminar and Spring Conference, but the first one
actually occurred on a Saturday night in a hotel ballroom at the NCTE Fall Convention in
Washington, DC. in November 1982. For that dance I brought with me a canvas bag filled with
about 20 collections of oldies on 33 1/3 rpm, which I played on a phonograph connected to a
couple of big speakers we had rented for the occasion. Later, as the dance grew in popularity, it
was also held at the Spring Conference, and even a couple of times at 4 C's, and I was joined on
the bandstand by "Johnny B. Goode" Mayher and "Smokey D." Daniels. We also began to use
compact disks (much easier), and charge a small admission fee to cover expenses; for one dance,
John printed up receipts for tax purposes that identified the event as the "Seminar on American
Cultural Rhythms of the 1950's and '60's." For a while we played mostly early rock n' roll and
Motown, and then in the 1980's added songs for the Springsteen, Pointer Sisters, and M.C.
Hammer generation. At some point about ten years ago the dance got taken over by the kids
working at Heinemann, and seems now to have faded from the scene, though we did resurrect it
briefly for the second CEE Summit in 2007 at Lake Forest College.”
Past Chairs:
According to Marie Nelson, after she had chaired the session for several years in its early
incarnation, “Eventually I found three people willing to co-chair so I could stop, and this time we
set up rotating terms so that there would be some continuing memory about what people
typically saw as helpful and what they liked less well. My thought was that if they collaborated,
they could teach the newer people as they rotated into the more responsible roles, but as I
remember, after a couple of years, the collaboration stopped. Then, at some point, I was asked to
take over as chair again in order to build the seminar back up. I think I did for three years.”
Michael Moore
Mary Bevens
Marie Nelson & Joy S. Ritchie 1982-3
Michael M. Williamson
Lori Norton-Meier 2005-7
Frieda Golden 2007-8
Chris Goering & Shelbie Witte (2008-2011)
Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, Peter Smagorinsky, & Michael W. Smith (2012-present)