Vol. 22 No. 3 (2021)

Dear Readers,

Greetings from the editorial team at Current Issues in Education (CIE)! 

As we present the third and final issue of 2021, I want to share about our growth as an editorial team as well as reflect on the year. CIE is one of the longest running open access journals in the field of education, managed entirely by doctoral students - a distinction that is quite rare in the world of publishing. This third issue completes the 22nd volume.

The new editorial team came into its own both in terms of its internal workings and external orientation during 2021. In addition to overseeing the peer review and publication of manuscripts, in February, we presented “Open Access is a Matter of Inclusion - Lessons from a Graduate Student Editorial Board” at the Virtual Unconference on Open Scholarship Practices in Education Research, highlighting how our focus on inclusion drives our policies and practices. In October during International Open Access Week, we organized a webinar spearheaded by Ivonne Lujano Vilchis, one of our associate editors. And in between, we continued to organize reviewer training workshops for new reviewers. 

Internally, the editorial team further streamlined the journal’s policies and procedures. We are especially pleased to announce that our journal has been indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Our efforts are reflected both in the quality and quantity of the submissions we have been receiving over the past year. 

Volume 22, Issue 3 exemplifies the high standards that we have set for our contributors, readers, and ourselves. The articles in this issue cover a wide variety of topics that are relevant and current in educational research, ranging from in-school to out-of-school educational contexts, from students to teachers, university faculty and administrators, and from learning standards and other cognitive parameters to non-cognitive and affective factors and their role in education. 

In “More than a Babysitter: Looking Back on an Effective Summer Enrichment Program,” Benterah Morton, Kelly O. Byrd, Elizabeth Allison, and André M. Green document how a standards-based summer enrichment program for elementary students addressed academic opportunity gaps. In the article “Students’ Perceptions of Team Learning across Teaching Frameworks and Settings,” authors Sarah K. Guffey, Christopher W. Parrish, and David S. Williams examine preservice teachers’ perceptions of team-based learning in face-to-face and online teacher education courses with the finding that teams provide important affordances in both contexts. Laura Handler, Teresa Petty, and Amy Good focus on inservice teacher professional development in their article titled “Supporting Teacher Learning during the Professional Development Experience: The Case of National Board Certification.” They find that there is a complex interaction between several dynamic forces that support effective professional development of teachers. Also, related to the field of professional development is another article titled “Mindfulness in the Professional Lives of K-12 Educators.” In this article, author Emily McRobbie employs an interpretive case study with K-12 teachers to study the effects of a mindfulness-based intervention program.

As 2021 comes to an end, the COVID-19 pandemic continues. So do the challenges it poses to education at all levels. Keeping this reality in mind, we introduce the dossier “Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections from the Field.'' The current issue carries two articles related to higher education. Care and compassion are highlighted by Grace Inae Blum and Leah M. Dale in their duoethnographic study “Becoming Humanizing Educators during Inhumane Times: Valuing Compassion and Care above Productivity and Performance.” The personal nature of the reflections are well-complemented by the second article in this section titled “Institutional Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Faculty and Administrator Experiences.” The authors Narketta Sparkman-Key, Tammi F. Dice and Alexandra C. Gantwhich employ chaos theory to reflect on institutional responses and their findings have significant implications for shaping university culture. 

We are grateful to you - our readers - for your continued association with the journal and hope that you find the articles informative and insightful. We are also grateful to our contributors and reviewers without whom the quality of the journal could not be possible. Over the last year, we have grown together both as a team and as a journal. It is now time for me to hand over the editorial responsibilities to Ivonne Lujano Vilchis, our experienced and accomplished editor, as I bid adieu as lead editor. 

Wishing all of you a wonderful break as the new year approaches!

Sincerely,

Marina Basu

Lead Editor | Current Issues in Education

On behalf of the CIE editorial team