JITE v32n4 - From the Editor - Recognition and Thanks

Recognition and Thanks

The publication of this issue completes Volume 32 of the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education . With the completion of an issue comes a change in leadership and responsibility on the Editorial Board. I am sad to say that three of our Assistant Editors have now completed their two year terms on the Journal Editorial Board. James Gregson, Tad Foster, and Ken Welty have served the Journal well. As a group, these three individuals have provided thoughtful and extensive reviews for almost every manuscript that was submitted in the past two years. They have responded to special requests from the Editor and have provided constructive feedback regarding ways to improve the quality of the Journal. I am confident that these three will continue to provide service to the Journal, either as referees or as future Editors of the Journal .

In This Issue

Four refereed articles are included in this issue. The first article, by Thomas Whetstone, explored the potential of mental imagery as a training technique for enhancing psychomotor skills. His results demonstrate that mental practice can be a powerful training tool for developing and refining physical skills. In the second article, Jay Rojewski, John Schell, Earle Reybold, and Cheryl Evanciew discuss the results of their survey that assessed special needs professionals' perceptions of the ability of learning disabled adolescents to acquire advanced cognitive skills. They provide evidence that those professionals believe that advanced cognitive skills can be acquired by adolescents with learning disabilities, and therefore, cognitive skills should receive more emphasis in the curriculum. The authors of the third article, Ahmad Zargari, Malcolm Campbell, and Ernest Savage, are concerned about the lack of a doctoral programs for future industrial technology faculty. Based on this concern, the authors conducted a study to determine if selected leaders in the field believe that a Doctor of Philosophy degree is needed for industrial technology professionals. This article also provides descriptive information about the organization and content of such a degree program. The recent growth of university degree programs in Human Resource Development has led to an increased concern about the knowledge and skills needed by professionals in training programs. The final article, by James Leach and Darrel Sandall, presents the results of a study in which they contacted human resource development managers to determine which business understandings and competencies should be incorporated into the academic preparation of human resource development professionals. Their results should be helpful to developers of curriculum in the evolving human resource development degree programs.

The At Issue section contains two essays. The first, by Matthew Pagliari and Patrick Foster, presents a discussion of the lack of literature in elementary technology education. Problems in both the quantity and the quality of the elementary technology education literature base are discussed. In the second essay, Thomas Erekson and Donna Trautman argue that the field of technology education lacks ethnic and gender diversity and they encourage us to become more proactive in this area. Under Review contains a review by Charles Sidell of the new book entitled Flex: A flexible tool for continuously improving your evaluation of training effectiveness . Bits and Pieces contains a complete bibliographic index for Volume 32 of the Journal and an acknowledgment of the exemplary service provided by the reviewers of the Journal . In addition, the usual items related to submitting manuscripts to the Journal , becoming a NAITTE member, and ordering various NAITTE publications are included at the end of this issue.

SDJ