Note from the Editors

Abstract

We are pleased to present to our readers our first issue as the editors of Journal of International Special Needs Education (JISNE) as the journal begins its seventeenth year. We hope to continue the great tradition of high quality that was maintained under the scholarly and wise editorship of Dr. Thomas P. Gumpel for the past seven years. Under Tom's leadership, JISNE has grown significantly. The quantity and quality of submissions to the journal have greatly increased from within and outside of the U.S.A., underlining the international nature of the journal. Additionally, the journal moved to become an e-journal since Fall 2013. It has been a great pleasure and a learning experience for both of us to work with Tom as Associate Editors during the past year. We thank Tom for his enthusiastic stewardship of the Council for Exceptional Children-Division of International Special Education and Services' flagship journal, and wish him all success in his future endeavors.We are also pleased to welcome the new and returning Editorial Board members. JISNE follows the double-blind peer review process whereby the reviewers and the authors are unaware of each other's identity. We rely on the Editorial Board members and Field Reviewers for their service in validating the information that is contained in the manuscript and commenting on its quality. The constructive feedback from reviewers helps the authors to improve their manuscripts to make them more relevant for JISNE's diverse readership.We believe this special issue of JISNE, devoted to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability would be of great interest to the readers. Three of the four articles presented in this special issue cover topics related to the CRPD reflecting different perspectives. We are thankful to Tom for initiating this issue.Winzer and Mazurek's article addresses the genealogy of the CRPD, and the authors argue that the CRPD is both a human rights treaty and a development tool. Schooling is enshrouded as a rights-based case, and inclusive education is viewed as a development tool.Kauffman and Badar argue that instruction, not inclusion, should be the central issue in special education. Anything other than instruction undercuts the legal and moral rights of students with disabilities to an appropriate education and fails to produce substantive social justice.Kanter, Damiani, and Ferri emphasize the importance of Article 24 of the CRPD to ensure an inclusive education system at all levels. The authors then discuss the role of inclusive education in Italy, which has long been regarded as a leader in the field of inclusive education.Argyropoulos and colleagues highlight the framework and discuss the results of an action research project which aimed to facilitate the adoption of assistive technology devices and specialized software by teachers of students with visual impairment.We would like to thank the authors for their thought provoking articles, and our reviewers for their contribution to a high-quality issue. We hope you will find these articles interesting and informative to read. Finally yet importantly, we encourage potential authors to continue to submit their original research, research syntheses, multi-case country studies, and evidence-based policy analyses to JISNE. Do check out our revised author and reviewer guidelines at http://www.jisne.org/.—Rashida Banerjee & Dimitris AnastasiouEditors