Abstract
Four years ago, I attended the Council for Exceptional Children Convention as a new Board Member of The Association for the Gifted (TAG). I walked around Portland, Oregon in the first week of February enjoying the adventure of a new city. I brought Voodoo donuts for the TAG exhibitors’ table (I couldn’t pick just one flavor to try for myself!) and we joked about the depths of my Mary Poppins backpack–you never know what you might find in it, from portable speakers to highlighters to band-aids. I was truly unaware of how drastically the world was about to change. Four years later, I have finished a year as Associate Editor (AE) of this esteemed journal and have moved to the role of Interim Editor. As I write this editorial, we are putting the finishing touches on a special issue on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The upcoming special issue, 35(2), will be in print May 2024, but articles are posted #OnlineFirst. Stay tuned to https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/JOA/0/0!
My name is Angela Novak and I am delighted to serve as your Interim Editor here at the Journal of Advanced Academics (JoAA). In the field of advanced academics, whether it is through the Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM; VanTassel-Baska, 2003) or using Depth and Complexity icons (Kaplan, 2018), we often think about overarching concepts or big ideas. In my inaugural editorial for 35(1), I will take a bit of a dive into the concept (ICM; VanTassel-Baska, 2003) or depth prompt (Kaplan, 2018) of patterns, particularly those seen over time (complexity prompt; Kaplan, 2018). The goal is that future editorials will be written similarly, with an overarching connection or big idea at play.
In August 2006, Bonnie Cramond wrote of such a pattern as 17(4) signaled the end of The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education (JSGE). She acknowledged that “in publications, as in life, there is a cycle. The end of one journal begets the birth of another. …. Journal of Advanced Academics, edited by Del Siegle and Betsy McCoach, is sure to be a welcome addition to the field” (Cramond, 2006, p. 196). I am honored to have had Drs. Siegle and McCoach as my advisor and professor, respectively, at the University of Connecticut while I pursued my M.A. I graduated in May 2006, the same year that they began the JoAA. I’ll admit, assuming this role, it's not just business—it's personal!
As I read Dr. Cramond's final editorial, and those that have been penned since, more patterns emerged. She thanks several people for their contributions to JSGE, such as a student assistant editor (AsE)—this same young “fresh voice” later served as an editor of JoAA, Dr. Matt McBee. Dr. Cramond lauded Tracy Cross, the first editor of JSGE and the current director of the Center for Gifted Education (CFGE) at William and Mary. While I completed my doctoral studies at William and Mary, Dr. Cross arrived after I left, but I had the pleasure of meeting him when we served on the TAG Board together. Later, at the NAGC convention in 2023 when I first represented JoAA at the “Meet the Editors” panel, I sat next to Dr. Cross as he ushered a new journal into existence, SENG-J, an open-access offering from Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted. Dr. Cramond also thanked Jenny Robins from Prufrock Press. In 2020, I sat next to fellow TAG board member, Dr. Robins, at our TAG booth in Seattle, sharing the conversation, and maybe a donut.
I attended my first “Meet the Editors” panel at NAGC in Charlotte, NC in 2006, in complete awe of the publishing process, having just begun my doctoral studies. I worked full-time as a gifted resource teacher (Norfolk, VA) and as a third-grade gifted classroom teacher (Newport News, VA) during the three years (plus a few months) it took me to finish my Ph.D. program, so except for a brief stint in the summer, I wasn’t a graduate assistant. I wasn’t involved with research projects at the CFGE, and I didn’t work with my professors or advisors on their writing or research. I taught, I took four classes each semester, and I was a Navy wife. In my third and final year of doctoral studies, my older (and only) sister passed away 2 weeks before my comprehensive exams; later that semester I learned I was pregnant with my first child, and then my husband got deployed for the remainder of the school year. I didn’t quite make my planned May graduation, but at least my husband returned in time for my son's birth in June. I defended in the summer and finished with my edits in the fall semester, having already moved to Connecticut to work for a nonprofit gifted summer program, and feeling the UCONN vibes once again with Dr. Renzulli on the board of the organization. I later worked for Washington D.C. public schools, which followed the SEM model and had a partnership with Renzulli Learning. Just last month, I attended my first meeting as Treasurer of Xavier House, a home for gifted youth experiencing the foster system, and an individual that I worked with 10 years ago in Connecticut was there–serving as a representative from Renzulli Learning.
Patterns. Recurrence. If there's anything I’ve learned in the past 20 years, it is that this field is small. We bump into each other—a lot! In reviewing the previous editorials there is also a pattern of rebirth and growth. As Dr. Cramond passed the proverbial torch, Drs. Siegle and McCoach kept the flame burning with their introductory editorial, “The First Word.” In it, they assured readers that their mission was to stay the course with research of interest to JSGE readers, while simultaneously expanding “the mission and audience to include educators who are outside the fields of secondary education and gifted education. JoAA's (sic) role is to publish data-driven research and evaluation projects that support and enhance advanced academic achievement for students of all ages” (p. 5). Siegle and McCoach offered the following parameters:
Include research that investigates strategies for increasing academic achievement, programs that promote high levels of academic achievement and engagement, and programs that prepare students to engage in rigorous and high-level academics. Lessen the focus on the characteristics of students who are academically advanced, and focus more on the features of programs, services, curricula, and instructional techniques that advance students academically. (2006, p. 5)
An essential focus for this new journal was not on the type of student but on how educators could help students find success (Siegle & McCoach, 2006).
In 22(5), published online on October 20, 2011, Siegle and McCoach wrote their final editorial as Co-Editors of JoAA. They reflected on personal growth, having expanded their family from two to a foursome since their time at the journal. (I still remember the day Del told me he was going to be a father, and my son came along just a few years later.) Beyond my reminiscing, they thoughtfully reflected in “Our Last First Word” about the breadth and depth of research that had been published under their leadership with statistics (of course!) and a synthesizing thought about advanced academics as a journal: Our belief has been that all students benefit from learning experiences that are grounded in high-level curriculum based on depth and complexity, that individual learning needs must be addressed, and that creative and critical thinking skills are the foundations of intellectually stimulating learning experiences. While we believe these factors are key for all students, they are essential when working with high-ability students. (Siegle & McCoach, 2011b, p. 669)
More on my goals later, but I'd like to give a quick nod to my homage to their editorial title, in the spirit of patterns. I love “The First Word ‘‘ but wasn’t sure if it fit with finding an overarching concept that we will hopefully identify in each issue to make connections between the articles—especially as the concept may not explicitly be in each article (let alone the first word). Plus, I felt like it belonged to Del and Betsy. Still, I held on to “The Word” to beget the new title, “The Editorial Word” in honor of the first editorial team of JoAA.
The overarching concept of patterns returned in 2012, along with Dr. McBee from JSGE days. The growth pattern continued, adding Dr. Michael Matthews, Sage as the new (and current) publisher, and in 23(1), an editorial goal of adding an invited commentary article with corresponding critiques and rejoinders (Matthews & McBee, 2012). The co-editors kept the tradition of an opening editorial in each issue, titled “Editor's Note.” After Matthews’ & McBee's 5-year term, the journal transitioned to the team of Dr. Anne Rinn and Dr. Todd Kettler, at the time both at the University of North Texas. The new editorial team included a “First Word” in 29(1) to mark their transition but didn’t include editorials in each issue as a practice. Drs. Rinn and Kettler followed the pattern of making their editorial mark by refining the editorial aims and scope, “to support research within these established traditions while also welcoming theory and research on educational innovations that exist beyond the typical, including those that foster academic challenge, talent development, and customizable achievement venues” (Kettler & Rinn, 2018, p. 3). They further enumerated examples that could constitute such practices in this editorial.
Drs. Rinn and Kettler led JoAA through 2022, and in 2023, the editorship passed to Drs. Slade and Schroth at Towson University. Following the pattern, they opened 34(1) with a two-part editorial, thanking the previous editors, telling a bit of the history, and sharing their goals for the future of the journal. Slade's part included goals to maintain the efficiency of the journal publication process and timeline, expand the editorial review board and journal contributors, and broaden the journal content in order to “address relevancy, existing research, and the world of practice” (Slade & Schroth, 2023, p. 4). The first aspect of this expansion of content involved the inclusion once again of editorial commentaries in each issue. Slade's second idea to further this expansion of content was to add “an interpretive narrative that translates theoretical and empirical content to practice in each issue” (2023, p. 4). I began with JoAA as an AE under Dr. Slade, and in the pattern of this small field of gifted and talented education, I first met her a few years ago … I was teaching in Virginia, and she was a professor giving a talk, and I remember her telling a story of recently returning from taking students to New Orleans to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In their final “Last Word”, the closing piece that JoAA founding editors included in each issue, Siegle and McCoach (2011a) interviewed Joel McIntosh of Prufrock Press, the publisher of JoAA before Sage. The very first iteration of the journal, before it became JSGE, started as a newsletter and later became the Prufrock Journal, which McIntosh described as a “little publication that was designed to essentially publish teaching practices that were working with secondary gifted kids. These were innovative practices that were based on research and that were very practical” (Siegle & McCoach, 2011b, p. 772). This is perhaps why the earliest issue online doesn’t begin with Volume 1, but is 7(1), with an editorial by Dr. Tracy Cross. With both Joel McIntosh's original Prufrock Journal and Mary Slade's spirit of service and authentic practice in mind, my editorial goal is to extend the previous third goal. Rather than having a narrative that explains the theory-to-practice connection, I would like to introduce Praxis, a section of the journal that contains articles that are research- and theory-based but focused on practical applications of advanced academics. Paulo Freire indicates that without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary action, that praxis “requires theory to illuminate it. Human activity is theory and practice; it is reflection and action” (2018, p. 125). Keep an eye out for an editorial in 35(2)–and earlier #OnlineFirst–that delineates the submission protocol for Praxis. We will begin accepting manuscripts for this section in early 2024!
Open-access research projects and action research studies are encouraged for the Praxis section! To that end, I would like to mention a resource that Sage brings to JoAA, which can be of particular benefit to Praxis: figshare. A repository already used for authors that have datasets and/or appendices to share that may be beyond the scope (or page limits!) of their final drafts, figshare (https://sage.figshare.com/joa) can host a variety of supplemental materials for theory-to-practice contributions to JoAA, including photographs and videos.
I am honored and excited to welcome along with me on this journey Dr. Keri Guilbault of Johns Hopkins University as a new AE. We have continued to work on the first two goals from 34(1), journal efficiency and broadening the editorial board. We are committed to seeking scholars from historically marginalized populations to serve on the Editorial Review Board. Advanced populations are racially, culturally, ethnically, linguistically, neurodivergently, and heteronormatively diverse; so too are the scholars that research these populations, and so too should be the editorial review board that reviews their work. We seek to honor the pattern that we know exists in intelligence, in potential, in giftedness, and talent. If you are interested in joining our editorial team, please reach out to me via email.
My personal goal for the journal is to provide more support for authors, particularly early career scholars, graduate students, first-generation scholars, multilingual scholars, researchers who might not have strong mentor support at their university, and so on. In the past JoAA has had an AsE, but I envision a new role for this position. The AsE will provide more in-depth support for authors on a manuscript, potentially before peer review (as needed), and/or after the peer review process. This role would provide coaching and feedback throughout the submission process, more than the expectation of a typical peer reviewer or journal editor.
In closing, and with a final nod to patterns, Joel McIntosh earned his Master's degree at Baylor University with Dr. Susan Johnsen, editor of Gifted Child Today. While not my first, an early and certainly one of my best author experiences in publishing was with Dr. Johnsen. She is kind, responsive, endless in her feedback (in a helpful way), and warmly encouraging. I shall endeavor to follow her pattern during my term at JoAA.
Yours in grace, justice, and joy,
Angela
