Abstract
As a review journal, Review of Educational Research (RER) covers an impressive range of issues, and the journal has published a considerable number of important and seminal pieces in the more than 1,300 articles since its first issue came out in the early 1930s. RER is the flagship review journal in education, and over the years it has provided the field with cutting-edge literature in education, such as meta-analyses of quantitative research, overviews of qualitative-based studies, and multiculturalism in all its dimensions, from the most obvious themes of curricular and demographic change to classroom-based arguments about culturally relevant pedagogy and the more subtle area of knowledge transformation. We aim to nurture these foci, which we believe are justifiable and sustainable as research areas.
Nonetheless, there are several areas that have received limited or no attention in the journal. For example, using achievement gap as a keyword (admittedly an approximate measure) retrieves one article in RER, and there are also a limited number of articles that are retrieved with other keywords that are associated with contemporary education research on equity: resilience (0), prevention (10), hope/optimism (4), African American (6), Latino/Hispanic (2), and Asian American (2). That said, we would like to see these themes advance and complexify along the following intellectual lines.
In addition to recognizing excellent reviews of all kinds, we would like to signal a couple areas that are currently underdeveloped in which we, as editors, would encourage more work. One, critical theories of education—from critical race theory to cultural studies and Marxist versions—are currently receiving insufficient attention and development in RER. This is not the same as suggesting that these traditions are entirely lacking attention within the discipline, for one only has to notice the many American Educational Research Association (AERA) panels that deal with these topics as well as the journal articles that utilize these perspectives. We suggest that RER consider the different and alternative directions that reviews may take outside of the well-worn arguments about the relatively well-understood tenets of these paradigms. Some of these reviews have already appeared in RER in recent issues. We would like to see reviews of new developments in these fields.
To this end, we encourage more experimental reviews that take into consideration syntheses between frameworks so that theories of education remain creative, and arguably “critical.” Critical race theory (CRT), critical social theory (CST), and cultural studies are no longer mere curiosities in education. Generations of researchers produced by the 1970s turn to Marxist reproduction theory; the 1980s saw the proliferation of cultural studies–inspired work, CST, and feminist theory; and in the 1990s and 2000s CRT-oriented expositions created a corpus of work that informs the field of education. We are interested in the new directions that inform these specializations, critiques of them, and what their future may look like. These are transitional times, signaled poignantly by Freire’s death in 1997 and the recent passing of Derrick Bell in 2011. We are interested in the “What now?” question in critical theories of education, which show continuity with their origins as well as push against them in order to pull forward. For example, what does critical literacy look like in a post-Freirean world? What does a race and economic class synthesis look like in theory, evidence, and practice? How does feminism explain gender disparities after the critique of essentialism? In another instance, decolonialism is a developing paradigm and could inform work in already popular themes in education, such as globalization and neoliberalism.
Two, the philosophy of education is also an area that RER could better engage. We may not be in the golden age of John Dewey, but there are exciting developments in philosophy of education that are interdisciplinary, which then extends the reach of RER reviews as they import insights from other disciplines into the field of education. Some of these works may be empirical, reinforcing the search for a better link between theoretical and empirical work. Often, the favored methodology of empirical philosophers or critical theorists may be qualitative or ethnographic, but we are also interested in what an emerging quantitative uptake of critical theory may look like. This takes us to other methodological concerns in the field that need further development.
Three, we would like to see more attention given to issues of profound importance in contemporary understandings of the long-standing disparities in education among cultural and socioeconomic subgroups in society. Thus, we need to move beyond studies of motivation and self-efficacy as constructs related to education in the abstract and focus on how these constructs operate in groups that are not achieving well. For instance, how does diversity interact with educational expectations in the context of the United States and other global societies? And how do we integrate the knowledge gained from critical studies with knowledge gained from contemporary studies of psychological processes and cultural identities to enhance pedagogy and educational practice?
A fourth and final area that would benefit the educational community and one that RER is well positioned to promote is information gained from integrative reviews of knowledge apprehended through longitudinal studies. Education research has been criticized because of the low rate of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Longitudinal studies that are theoretically grounded and that have been replicated in multiple groups and data sets can provide knowledge that is equally valuable as insights from RCTs, insofar as they are grounded in real-world settings and do not lack the external validity of work conducted only in the laboratory. For the past two decades, methodologies such as structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling have been used with nationally representative data sets such as High School and Beyond and the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), among many others, to examine theoretical models and outcomes of diverse groups. RER is well positioned to be a platform for rigorous, integrative reviews of the knowledge that has been gained from these studies.
Under our leadership of RER for the next 3 years, we hope to maintain its high standards for intellectual engagement, scholarly production, and openness to new ideas. We look forward to your submissions.