From back to the future

Abstract

I was delighted to accept an invitation to write a valedictory editorial for this the last Issue, for which I will claim any responsibility. In the 48-year history of this journal, editorials have been rare, editors preferring to maximise the space available to contributors. In the 35 years that I have been an editor, there have been but four: Research in Education approaching 1984 [Issue 26], Change in Education, change in Research in Education [Issue 47], RinE into the 21st Century [Issue 73] and A Shift in Policy [Issue 78]. These together with two introductions to Indexes [Issues 61 and 91] provide a fairly detailed account of the journal’s development. Here, only my brief reflections can be entertained. Over the years, Research in Education evolved from a mainly domestic journal with a concentration on contributions from the psychology and sociology of education to a clearly interdisciplinary and international journal. While born in the Faculty of Education at Manchester University, it immediately drew contributions from scholars around the country. Until 1980, when I was appointed all the editors were, or had been, in the Faculty at Manchester. It is of interest to note how many of the non-professorial editors, including myself, went on to gain Chairs of Education – even when these were rarer than they are now. In 1993, RinE openly declared on its new cover that it was ‘An interdisciplinary, International Research Journal’. Since then both the Editorial Board and the contributors have become increasingly international. For example, Issue 90 contained papers from four continents, and over a third of the Editorial Board was from outside the UK. Developments in education journals during the 1990s saw a proliferation of specialist publications which some predicted would lead to the demise of more general ones. It was therefore gratifying that RinE sustained its popularity, indicating that it had an established and secure role within the field of education. RinE began its internet accessibility 1999, so the journal entered the new millennium in an appropriate format, alongside traditional print.