Editorial

Citation

Walker, A. and Hallinger, P. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 50 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jea.2012.07450daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Educational Administration, Volume 50, Issue 4

This issue marks two important innovations for the Journal of Educational Administration that we foreshadowed in our first editorial.

Ross Thomas Outstanding Paper Award Vol. 49, 2011

The first is the inaugural A. Ross Thomas Outstanding Paper Award. This award will be made annually to the author or authors of the paper selected by the Editorial Advisory Board as the most outstanding of the respective volume. Two highly commended papers will also be acknowledged. The award is dedicated to honour Ross’s decades of service to the Journal as editor and more broadly in the field of educational leadership and management. We are pleased to offer our congratulations to the authors for their outstanding contributions.

Outstanding Paper Award

“Principals’ capability in challenging conversations: the case of parental complaints” (Vol. 49 No. 3), Viviane M.J. Robinson and Deidre M. Le Fevre

Highly Commended Papers

“Principals’ leadership and teachers’ motivation: self-determination theory analysis” (Vol 49. No. 4), Ori Eyal and Guy Roth

“Predicting teacher retention using stress and support variables” (Vol. 49 No. 2) Daniel A. Sass, Andrea K. Seal and Nancy K. Martin

Introduction of the “Legacy” series

The second is the introduction of the “Legacy” series. When Ross Thomas shared with us his idea about the 50th anniversary issue of the JEA, it got us thinking about both the importance of honoring past contributions to knowledge and placing current knowledge in historical perspective. As our own careers have evolved we have also become more attuned to the importance of maintaining a cross-generational perspective on development of knowledge in our field. Unfortunately, too often we treat the most recent findings as the most important findings and ignore important contributions from the past.

For example, students often receive feedback from faculty members that, “Your reference list isn’t sufficiently up-to-date.” But how many students receive critical feedback because their literature reviews omitted key references from 30 or 40 years ago! One of the most important papers that either of us has read was written by James G. March when he was at the School of Education at Stanford in the mid-1970s, “The American public school administrator, a short analysis”. An incredible piece of elegantly conceived and written scholarship by one of the foremost organizational theorists of the twentieth century. Yet how many students today would have had occasion to read this work?

These reflections led us to conceive of the idea to launch a Legacy series in the JEA. The Legacy series will consist of invited, peer reviewed papers from senior scholars. The selected scholars will be asked to reflect on the line of inquiry on they have worked over the past 30 to 50 years. They will identify areas in which progress has been made as well as issues that have yet to be adequately resolved. It is our hope that the Legacy series will provide intellectual connective tissue binding past, current and future generations of scholars in our field.

Thus far we have contacted a dozen influential senior scholars from different domains within educational leadership and management, as well as from different countries. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to receiving their manuscripts and bringing them to print. It is our goal to publish two or three Legacy articles per year.

The first of the Legacy papers is included in the current issue, authored by Edwin M. Bridges, Emeritus Professor at Stanford University. Ed’s training at the University of Chicago during the early 1960s took place during the heyday of the “Theory movement in educational administration”. A former high school principal, Ed’s contributions to our field have been characterized by a continuous and undivided focus on theory, empirical research and practice.

As Ed notes in his Legacy paper, he was brought up in Missouri, a state whose license plates bear the state’s motto, “The show me state”. That belief in the importance of empirical inquiry and validation can be seen throughout his scholarship over the years. During his career Ed has written important conceptual and empirical papers on shared decision-making (1967), instructional leadership (1967), administrative preparation (1977), teacher job satisfaction (1980), teacher evaluation (1990), and problem-based leadership education (1992, 1995, 2007) to name but a few.

The editors are particularly pleased that Ed agreed to author our first Legacy article, first because he was an early contributor to the journal and second because he has been a mentor to both of us. Rather than provide more background, we simply invite our readers to read Ed’s contribution.

Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award, 2011

Finally, we would like to congratulate the winner of the Emerald Group Publishing and the European Foundation for Management and Development Outstanding Doctoral Research Award. The Journal of Educational Administration sponsors the Educational Leadership and Strategy category.

Congratulations to the winner of the 2011 award:

Dr Rachel McNae

Young women and leadership development: Co-constructing leadership learning in a New Zealand secondary school

University of Waikato, Faculty of Education, New Zealand

Dr McNae’s research has made an impact on theory and practice. She has published widely from the thesis and presented findings at conferences and seminars to relevant groups.

The implementation of the Legacy series and awards for outstanding writing help to define JEA’s ongoing agenda, which is to seek out and share the best work in the field while simultaneously respecting our academic roots and our future orientation.

Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change, Hong Kong Institute of Education

Allan Walker and Philip Hallinger