Twenty five years of the Journal of Educational Change: A Perspective from the Global South
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Twenty five years of the Journal of Educational Change: A Perspective from the Global South Brahm Fleisch1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Over the past quarter century, the pages of the Journal of Educational Change have been filled with some of the most important and exciting thinking in the field. That said, three important challenges need to be addressed in the next decade if the Journal is to continue to hold its prominent position. The first relates to finding a way to diversify the geographic distribution of leading thinkers in the field. The second relates to engaging in new ways with evidence. The third involves moving away for universalism in core knowledge claims. Keywords Education change · Universalism · Cumulative research program Over the past quarter century, the pages of the Journal of Educational Change have been filled with some of the most important and exciting thinking in the field. That said, three important challenges need to be addressed in the next decade if the Journal is to continue to hold its prominent position. The first relates to finding a way to diversify the geographic distribution of leading thinkers in the field. The second relates to engaging in new ways with evidence. The third is to rethink universalism embedded in the scholarship on education change. Although the Journal’s seminal contributions have come from a diverse range of English speaking countries and Europe, particularly Scandinavia, the editors needs to find a way to re-center the scholarship generally and provide a platform for research leaders, in particular, from the East and the Global South. This is a not a new insight (nor is it unique to the Journal.) Garcia-Huidobro et al. (2017) analysis of the first fifteen years of the journal illustrated this point. Their quantitative analysis showed the enduring dominance of a small group of scholars working in and on Global North English-speaking education systems, generating changeknowledge from a select group of districts in the United States, provinces in Canada and, reform movements in England, New Zealand, and Australia. Garcia-Huidobro * Brahm Fleisch [email protected] 1
University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
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and colleagues found that by 2016, of the total 11,486 Google Scholar citations of articles published in the Journal, 61% come from 52 articles, most of which were authored by a relatively small group of researchers including Fullan, Hargreaves, Shirley, Day, Sahlberg, Harris, Levin, Leithwood, Datnow and Ainscow. In other words, although the Journal published research by a wide range of researchers from diverse settings and systems, the Journal’s primary impact relied on this small group of scholars writing on and about education systems Garcia-Huidobro et al. referred to as the Anglosphere.1 The second key insight goes beyond a critique of the narrowness and spatial dimension of the group of influencers. The scholarship of educational change more often than not
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