JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING VOL. 29, NO. 9, P. 913 (1992)

EDITORIAL

JRST Welcomes All Quality Research

About a decade ago, JRST Editor Jim Shymansky published a number of articles in the Research Forum in order to stimulate thinking about various forms of research. Now, as then, JRST remains committed to publishing high-quality research in science education. In “The Place of Qualitative Research in Science Education” (JRST, April 1982), Doug Roberts wrote convincingly about the need for both qualitative and quantitative research in science education. He said, and I agree, “An excessively narrow image-on either the qualitative or the quantitative side-does a disservice to our students and the development of our enterprise.”

Three articles in the Comments and Criticisms section of this issue were written because of questions that were raised at the 1992 NARST meeting in Cambridge. A few NARST members at the meeting apparently felt that JRST is biased against qualitative research. The article by Wandersee and Demastes reports on an analysis of manuscripts submitted to JRST during 1991. They report that the rejection rate for manuscripts using qualitative methods is considerably below that of manuscripts using quantitative methods. The comments by Lederman, following the report by Wandersee and Demastes, urge science education researchers to “let the research questions direct the research approaches and data analysis procedures.” The comments by Kyle et al. grew out of a “focus group” at the 1992 NARST meeting that raised several questions about our mission to improve science teaching through research.

To the “argument” that the report by Wandersee and Demastes does not account for science education researchers who are reluctant to send their work to JRST because it might not be reviewed fairly, I can say only that every reasonable effort is made to see that each manuscript receives a fair and prompt review. Beyond that, 1 do not know what can be done to assure authors that JRST treats all manuscripts fairly.

I suspect that the fact that only about one in four manuscripts submitted to JRST actually is published has something to do with certain authors’ reluctance to submit their work to JRST. Like other journals that are viewed as the best in their fields, JRST receives and rejects more manuscripts than competing journals. The only bias sug- gested by this situation is a strong preference for high-quality research reports and other scholarly work in science education. Until my term as editor is completed, I intend to continue to work with such a bias.

RON GOOD Editor

0 1992 by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0022-4308/92/090913-01