30 Years of Advancing the Field of Education Abroad: Reflections and New Directions for Frontiers

Abstract

We used several reflection processes to assess where we are currently as a field and journal and to chart our future directions. First, after a SWOT analysis, the Editorial Board divided itself into three working groups, reflecting on the focus, organization, and quality of our work. Each made recommendations and brought them back for discussion with the full Board. Also, we invited a group of Visiting Distinguished Editorial Fellows to join us as action editors for a number of submissions whose review process had been complicated by the pandemic and editorial transition, and to come together for a reflective conversation on what they noticed and would like to see more of based on their long histories in the field. There were many parallel themes between this conversation and those of the Editorial Board working groups, which led us to plan several changes for our journal. Our consensus is that moving forward, we would like to support more robust engagement with the existing literature, rigorous methodologies, critical interdisciplinary thought pieces, and clearly articulated relevance to practice.