JITE v33n3 - From the Editor - The Future of the Journal Looks Bright
The Future of the Journal Looks Bright
Those of you who have been long time members of the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators and have followed the ups and down of the Association will agree that NAITTE is on very solid ground. The leadership provided by President Thomas Walker during the past two years has revived a feeling of professionalism in the organization that had waned in recent years. There has been a renewed vibrancy in meetings of the NAITTE officers and in the conference sessions that have been organized by NAITTE members. Current President Sam Stern has plans to build on the accomplishments of Tom Walker and continue to strengthen the organization.
The strength of NAITTE is important to the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education . Only a few years ago NAITTE officers considered proposals to significantly change the format and number of issues of the Journal . These proposals were responses to the financial weakness of the organization and concerns about the ability of NAITTE to cover the costs of producing a high quality journal. While this activity occurred primarily within the organization, concerns about the future of the Journal were also expressed in widely disseminated publications outside NAITTE. For example, Mark Sanders described the Journal's gloomy situation in a chapter in the Council on Technology Teacher Education's 44th Yearbook.
Although we have been through some tough times, I am pleased with the current status of the Journal . We continue to recruit excellent referees who devote many hours of their time reviewing and reacting to manuscripts that have been submitted for review. Our Editorial Board continues to be one of the strongest in the field. On the financial side, the membership of NAITTE has increased to a level that will allow us to continue to publish the Journal in its current form and at the level of quality that has become its hallmark. Many members of NAITTE may not know that library subscriptions provide enough revenue to cover approximately one-half of the total production costs. We are fortunate that library subscriptions have increased each of the past three years. While revenue to support the Journal has increased, we have also been searching for ways to improve the efficiency of the editorial review and production procedures. As you may know, our use of e-mail and the world-wide-web has enhanced our ability to communicate with referees and authors at very little cost. We have also streamlined our production process to significantly reduce the cost of manuscript proofreading and page layout.
As you can see, the future of the Journal looks bright. The primary goal of the Editorial Board of the Journal is to continue the long standing tradition of publishing a high quality scholarly journal in the field of industrial and technical teacher education. Given the current state of NAITTE, our parent organization, it looks like we will continue to meet that goal.
In This Issue
Four featured articles are included in this issue. The first article, by Roger Hill, Robert Wicklein, and Michael Daugherty, presents the results of a study of the perceptions of technology educators, school administrators, and guidance counselors. Their results provide evidence that administrators and counselors who work in schools that have high quality technology education programs are knowledgeable about the goals and philosophies of technology education and are also very supportive of these programs. In the second article, Karen Zuga provides evidence that women have been key players in the development of technology education-although they have not received sufficient recognition for their work. Zuga asks why women's contributions are missing from the contemporary literature base. The third article, by Theodore Lewis, provides a philosophical examination of the impact of technology on work and jobs. His goal is to offer suggestions to improve the quantity and quality of inquiry in this area. In the final article, Sarah Duncan examines aspects of the instructional approach called cognitive apprenticeship . Based on her analysis, she contends that certain components of cognitive apprenticeship have the potential to significantly improve student learning of technical content and skills.
The At Issue section contains an essay by Donald Sloan, in which he reacts to a prior At Issue by Thomas Erekson and Donna Trautman. While Sloan agrees with many of the issues raised in Erekson and Trautman's essay about diversity and mentoring, he raises other concerns and suggests that multiple approaches are needed to ensure racial and cultural diversity in higher education. The Comments section contains an essay by Donna Dare in which she expresses her concern about the limited cooperation between education and human resource development. Dare suggests that using preventive strategies in human resource development may improve that relationship. Under Review includes a book review by Dan Brown of the Office of Technology Assessment's book, Learning to Work: Making the Transition from School to Work . Finally, in addition to the usual items related to submitting manuscripts to the Journal , becoming a NAITTE member, and ordering various NAITTE publications, Bits and Pieces recognizes the winners of the Journal's Outstanding Manuscript Awards for Volume 32 .
SDJ
Author
Johnson is Associate Professor, Technology Education, Dept. of Vocational and Technical Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois.
Reference Citation: Johnson, S. D. (1996). The future of the Journal looks bright. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , 33(3), 3-5.