American Journal of Education Identified as One of the Top Education Journals

by David Price (Februrary 2010)

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A recent survey of more than 300 of the nation's top university scholars in the field of education has placed the Penn State-based publication American Journal of Education among eleven core academic journals with "demonstrated impact."

Researcher Rodney K. Goodyear (University of Redlands) and his colleagues analyzed 126 education-focused academic journals and published their findings in the article "The Intellectual Foundations of Education: Core Journals and Their Impacts on Scholarship and Practice" in the journal Educational Researcher.

"This is a remarkable achievement given that AJE moved to Penn State less than ten years ago after a period of decline and a missed year of publication in 2002," says Gerald LeTendre, editor of American Journal of Education. LeTendre assumed leadership of the journal after the passing of William L. Boyd in 2008. College of Education graduate students Emily Crawford (Educational Theory and Policy) and Melanie Fedri (Higher Education) are the current managing editors.

"Under the leadership of Bill Boyd," LeTendre continues, "AJE flourished."

Goodyear and his colleagues asked their survey respondents to assess education journals across several factors, including scholarship, policy and practice, and impact. The authors noted that concept of "impact" is far ranging, "(It) overlaps with the less explicit concepts of journal prestige, reputation, and quality."

Many other fields are highly focused disciplines. They may be served by only a handful of academic journals, and the hierarchy of those journals is relatively apparent. The field of education is a complex weave of disciplines and subject matter, which makes being identified as a core journal special for AJE.

"Because education is such a broad field that encompasses kindergarten through graduate education, subject specialties, pure research to pure practitioner orientations, there are very few journals that speak to all educators—only eleven according to this study," LeTendre adds. "I think it is one of the strengths of AJE that we continue to offer articles that cover the broad spectrum of educational research."

The complete article is available online here: http://edr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/38/9/700.pdf