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I am pleased to announce that this issue marks the amalgamation of the Queensland Journal of Educational Research into Issues in Educational Research. What this in fact means is that we have begun to mount previous Queensland Journal of Educational Research articles onto our web site at http://www.iier.org.au/qjer/qjer.html
The merger took place in September 2004. A full archive is now in development on the IIER website, to recognise and preserve the substantial contribution that QJER made to scholarly publishing of educational research in Australia, from its inception in 1985 as the Queensland Researcher, until its final volume in 2003.
The Queensland Institute for Educational Research, which has been running since 1936, unfortunately will not continue to operate after 31 December this year. The workloads of academics and researchers in universities have become so heavy in recent years that it is becoming much harder to find the space and time to continue with the sort of voluntary work they have been doing for decades. In the current drive for accountability and effectiveness, a vast wealth of voluntary community service is being lost to the research world. The retiring editor, Dr Simon Clarke, now at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Western Australia has helped supplied the initial electronic files for the new archive.
To mark the amalgamation of the two journals, the Queensland Institute for Educational Research distributed the Queensland Journal of Educational Research 19(2) and Issues in Educational Research 14(1) to its members, and will also distribute this journal, 14(2), on publication. The Queensland Institute members have been invited to subscribe to Issues in Educational Research from 2005, and to contribute articles for review and publication.
Indeed, the first article in this issue (Bryer, Grimbeek, Beamish & Stanley) was submitted to the Queensland Journal of Educational Research and referred to us by the retiring editor, and the authors were happy for a related journal to proceed with the review process and publication.
Also in this issue, we have introduced a new feature in the book reviews. In the next few issues IIER will be publishing a series of reviews from postgraduate students/novice researchers on the European Union-supported educational research 1995-2003: Briefing papers for policy makers (http://www.pjb.co.uk/npl/) document. The EU document is aimed at policy and decision makers in the field of education and training. It contains reports, conclusions and recommendations of research projects funded under the European Union.
This exercise is in line with IIER's policy to encourage postgraduate students and novice researchers to gain practice in academic activities. Postgraduate students from time to time write their first published article for Issues in Educational Research, learning about the review process and how to revise and improve their papers after review. Others are invited to review others' articles, alongside a more experienced referee. And now a group of postgraduate students at the University of Western Australia are learning to write book reviews for publication. Thank you very much to Zsuzsanna Millei for organising this innovation. And congratulations to doctoral student Christine Buckley for her personal reflections on finding a balance between VET-based policy and research and university-based research.
There are seven articles in this issue, spanning a broad range of educational research issues in all sectors of education. The first article by Fiona Bryer, Peter Grimbeek, Wendi Beamish & Anthony Stanley deals with parental attitudes to inclusive education for children with special needs. They tested an instrument developed in the USA called Parental attitudes to inclusion (PATI) on a small sample of parents in Queensland.
Maggie Clarke looks at mentoring as a strategy of staff development for early career researchers in universities. Her model was built on her own experience as an early career researcher at the University of Western Sydney.
John Godfrey and Ann Galloway are involved in a large research project into conductive hearing loss amongst Indigenous children in Western Australia. Their paper looks at one aspect of their research, that of using the Performance indicators in primary school (PIPS) test to assess early literacy and numeracy skills among Indigenous children.
Brian Hemmings, Erica Smith and Peter Rushbrook, also researching into issues in tertiary education, focus on the factors that contribute to the production or non-production of refereed publications by academics. The analysis, using a logistic regression, demonstrated that high levels of confidence in writing for refereed publications, being male, and holding a senior academic position were predictive of producing refereed publications, and that the first factor was the most important predictor.
Robyn Smyth was engaged in a large scale study of educational change management investigating the introduction of an innovative new curriculum, Dual Accredited Vocational Courses, into the senior years of high school in New South Wales. Her paper outlines one researcher's reflections on the development and use of a conceptual framework as a research tool.
With the paper by Leyla Tercanlioglu from Atatürk University, in Turkey, we celebrate the second paper accepted from outside Australia in twelve months. Her field is teaching English as a foreign language. The aim of her study was to discover gender differences in language learning strategies used by foreign language learners. Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was used to gather information about the strategies. The results showed significant gender differences, favouring males, in students' strategy use
And finally, David Zyngier from Monash University explores the issue of how the media handled two seminal reports on the state of educational advantage and disadvantage in 'rich nations'. This paper analyses how the print media interpreted these reports according to a critical reading of the reports themselves. This is then compared and contrasted to what the reports actually have to say about social justice and educational equity, advantage and disadvantage.
Clare McBeath
Editor
October 2004
| Please cite as: McBeath, C. (2004). Editorial. Issues In Educational Research, 14(2), iv-vi. http://www.iier.org.au/iier14/editorial2.html |