Abstract
We begin this editorship mindful that it comes at a critical moment in the history of AERJ and, to the extent that AERJ shapes the field, the history of education research. As AERA transforms AERJ into a unified journal, we share the association’s ambition of further advancing AERJ as the member publication of record on education at the individual, institutional, and social levels of inquiry. As editors of the Social and Institutional Analysis section of AERJ (AERJ-SIA), we are committed to publishing the highest quality critical social, cultural, humanistic, and institutional analyses of education. We are confident this work will continue to exemplify the depth and breadth of such research in education.
To achieve these goals, we aim to build on past editorships of both SIA and the section on Teaching, Learning, and Human Development by bringing historically underrepresented subfields and research perspectives to the fore as a means of generating holistic understandings of the complex sociocultural processes we call education. With the guidance of a stellar SIA editorial board, including many continuing members, and support from a talented team of managing editors, we intend to be a proactive force, reflective of diverse perspectives and constituencies, during this time of editorial transition. That this editorship comes on the cusp of AERA’s centennial year also raises exciting possibilities for reflecting on the lessons of the past and envisioning the future of AERA, its flagship journal, and the field.
AERJ-SIA is distinguished by the situated nature of its empirical, theoretical, epistemological, and analytical moorings. AERJ-SIA articles position education squarely within the complex webs of meaning and human-built environments of which it is part. AERJ-SIA is also characterized by multidisciplinarity, multiple methods, and what former editors Sandra Hollingsworth and Margaret Gallego (2006) call “a deep commitment to diversity across geographic and cultural spaces, academic disciplines, professional and philosophical stances, and international perspectives” (p. 3). Under the editorships of Lois Weis and Kenneth Howe (see their editorial statements: Howe et al., 2012; Weis, 2009), AERJ-SIA gave heightened attention to immigration, higher education, education policy decision making, and the contributions to education of anthropology, history, law, and philosophy.
Going forward from these foundations, we take as our starting point the belief that education research should “build fundamental theory while at the same time addressing practical problems in the world” (Lee, 2008, p. 798). Guided by this proposition, there are several areas of emerging research that AERJ-SIA is ideally suited to address. The first is the phenomenon of “super-diversity” resulting from intensified transmigration in the wake of global flows of people, information, capital, and technology (Blommaert, 2013; Spring, 2008). These processes are creating urban neighborhood, school, and virtual spaces characterized by multilayered, crisscrossing cultural, linguistic, religious, national, and racial/ethnic identifications. At the same time, education policies, particularly in the West, are increasingly focused on managing, containing, and controlling certain kinds of diversity. One pervasive and deeply troubling consequence of these processes is the heightened segregation of educational opportunity and wealth. In the United States, this is governed by state-level standardizing regimes and language- and culture-restrictionist movements. These intertwined global, national, and local processes raise a number of questions with both theoretical and practical significance for the field of education:
How is super-diversity configured across social contexts, and how are schools, communities, and nation states responding to these global phenomena? What are the implications for equity and social justice in education?
How are ethnic, linguistic, racial, and other forms of social difference constructed as a problem or a resource and with what implications for educational access, opportunity, and equity?
What role does educational language policy play in structuring diversity in schools and society?
How do children and youth experience these processes, and what lessons can be drawn from youth experiences to inform education policy and practice?
These questions lead us to broader research perspectives, which, while not necessarily new to AERJ-SIA, we wish to highlight:
critical race studies;
critical language studies, particularly language education planning and policy;
Indigenous, feminist, humanist, decolonizing, and interdisciplinary approaches;
critical ethnography;
the moral, ethical, and advocacy dimensions of education policy making and leadership; and
a view of schooling as a world cultural institution.
Finally, we are reminded that May 17, 2014, marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. This anniversary corresponds with the upcoming commemoration of AERA’s centennial year. In light of both milestones and the research directions outlined previously, we encourage contributions that provide retrospective and prospective analyses of the evolving social contexts of education in the United States and beyond: What do the lessons of the past teach us for building theory while, as Lee (2008) urges, “addressing practical problems in the world” (p. 798)? How can the vast intellectual capital amassed over the past century be marshaled to address pressing problems of education policy, practice, and justice? As Lomawaima (2012) asks, speaking from English-only Arizona: “Can scholarship about education make a difference in the world?”
As we move forward together, we welcome your ideas, recommendations, and substantive research contributions. We are honored to serve as the stewards of the SIA section of AERJ, and we look forward to engaging the crucial issues in education that lie before us all.