Abstract
In our March 2003 inaugural issue, Theory and Research in Education announced its intention ‘to bring together the important theoretical work bearing on educational principles, policy and practice that is taking place within the various disciplines, to publish it in a form that is both respectful of the standards of each discipline and… maintains accessibility for the non-specialist reader. Alongside theoretical work in political science, law, philosophy, sociology, history, psychology, and education, we aim to publish empirical and practice-related work that is pertinent to theoretical and normative issues in education’. Now in our tenth year, we are recommitting ourselves to this mission of bringing theory, evidence and normative analysis together, and we are adopting an editorial structure even more conducive to its fulfillment.
Theory and Research in Education is the embodiment of a vision of what a journal of educational philosophy and theory might be, a vision articulated by Harry Brighouse and shared by many others. He and I have advanced that vision in co-editing the journal since our work on it began fully a decade ago, and it has been a fruitful and rewarding collaboration. Professor Brighouse is stepping down now in order to focus on related initiatives in philosophy of education. While these initiatives will no doubt contribute substantially to the field’s vitality, yielding benefit for the readers of Theory and Research in Education, his ongoing editorial contributions will be greatly missed. Looking ahead, I will continue with the journal in the role of Editor-in-Chief, assisted by Elaine Unterhalter (Education and International Development, Institute of Education, University of London), who will continue as an Associate Editor, by Dianne Gereluk (Faculty of Education, University of Calgary), who will continue as Reviews Editor, and by the new Associate Editors who join us with this issue: James Dwyer (Law, College of William and Mary, USA), Adam Nelson (Educational Policy Studies and History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), and Emily Robertson (Education and Philosophy, Syracuse University, USA). I am delighted to be working with this team of Associate Editors, representing a breadth of disciplinary expertise in keeping with TRE’s mission, and to welcome to the journal Adam Nelson and a diverse array of new members of our Editorial Board: Sigal Ben-Porath, Jason Blokhuis, Ansley Erickson, Sonia Exley, Michael Hand, Christopher Loss, and Debra Satz.
The passage of years has suggested in recent months the wisdom of a leave of absence, however, and I will take such leave as I can from the journal and my academic post alike for the duration of volume 11. I am very pleased to announce that the general editorship of the journal will be in the capable hands of Professor Doret J. de Ruyter (Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogy, Vrije University, The Netherlands), who will serve as Acting Editor-in–Chief in my absence.
We are very pleased to feature in this issue a symposium on race, opportunity and education. The racial achievement gap in education is a major crux of concern about educational, racial, and socio-economic justice, and its causes and possible remedies are hotly contested. Understanding the relationships between causation, justice, and remediation in this debate requires more than passing attention to the nature of fair opportunity and the dynamics of race and choice. The papers comprising this symposium advance our understanding of these matters in important ways. They were among those presented at a conference on Race, Opportunity, and Education hosted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in October 2011, the second of three international conferences in philosophy of education funded by the Spencer Foundation. The journal and its editors are grateful to the Spencer Foundation, the HGSE, the conference organizers, Meira Levinson and Lawrence Blum, and the authors, Elizabeth Anderson, Christopher Lewis, Debra Satz, and Sigal Ben-Porath, for their contributions in making this valuable set of papers available to our readers.