LAUSR

It is my pleasure to provide the editorial for this special edition which addresses minority group concerns in social work education. When the call for abstracts was opened in May 2018 for this special edition on social work with minority groups, I was keen to understand local and international experiences of minority students, service users, and carers and to collate recommendations for best practice with specific minority groups in the context of social work education. I expected to be inundated with diverse abstracts addressing this very important area; however, expectations were dashed when by the initial deadline I had only received few abstracts. The deadline for the call for papers was extended, and I utilized nontraditional channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, UK-based Anti-Racist Social Work Education Group (ARSWEG) and the Black Academic Forum (Tedam, Matoo, Mano, & Singh, 2015) to reach a wider audience. The abstracts received were from different parts of the world and included Hong Kong, Portugal, and Canada capturing diverse interests and issues. For example, the submission from Portugal examined the experiences of LGBT young men. Full papers were then reviewed and feedback offered on drafts. This process was important for helping to develop confidence in writing for journal publication and was both intense and rewarding. However, it soon became apparent that writing in English was problematic for some authors and more needed to be done to support these writers to publish. We often take for granted the English spoken and written word and from the process of reviewing abstracts and initial drafts, we came to a realization that important global knowledge is potentially at risk of being lost due to the vagaries and expectations about academic publishing because of the difficulties associated with academically expressing one self and writing in English. In total, we accepted 10 full papers which were allocated for peer review. Finding two reviewers for each submission was difficult and challenging, and the delays to the timeframe for this Special Edition were mainly to do with identifying reviewers who were available and willing to undertake this work. Once reviewers agreed to take on this work, the high quality of their feedback meant that some authors were continuously supported as they crafted their writing. The peer review process was highly supportive and valuable for identifying theoretical and empirical gaps in submissions and helping authors to recraft their ideas to develop better analytical focus. As the feedback received from external reviewers was important for shaping and determining the contours of this special edition and the range of minority group issues covered in this edition was shaped by the different stages of writing which interrogated social work education with and about with minority groups. SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 2019, VOL. 38, NO. 5, 557–562 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2019.1618819