What are some recommended education journals for educators?

AI Thread Summary
The discussion focuses on identifying reputable education journals that can serve as valuable resources for educators, particularly in higher education. Participants express a need for journals that provide current research and practical applications in teaching science, math, engineering, and health professions. While some journals, like The Journal of Nursing Education, are noted for their relevance, concerns are raised about their outdated educational theories and lack of rigorous outcome measures. Recommendations include journals such as Advances in Health Sciences Education and resources from the National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA), which may provide useful strategies, although the quality of their college-level publications is questioned. The conversation emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between high-quality journals and those that may not contribute significantly to educational research, especially for those new to the field. Links to various journals and resources are shared to aid in finding more applicable studies and innovative teaching strategies.
Moonbear
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I thought it might be good to start a thread on journals that educators could use as resources to learn more about current ideas in education research. Well, okay, I thought mostly someone else might be able to offer some pointers toward well-respected journals in the field. We probably all know where to find scientific journals relevant to our field, but education journals might be a bit more of an unknown.

Perhaps if there are ones that are a bit more "applied" in terms of using new educational approaches toward science, math, engineering, or health professions teaching, those might be good for our audience here. Or, just some good, solid, educational psychology type sources that would be geared toward higher education? I find plenty on early childhood and adolescent education, but haven't yet met with success trying to find things addressing college-aged students. I'm sure they must be out there, I just don't know where to start looking for them apparently.

Just as an example, I recently found The Journal of Nursing Education. While the articles are relevant specifically to my interests in teaching nursing students, they seem a bit behind the times in terms of educational theory and very weak on solid measures of outcome (for example, one article basically was just about how much the students liked a particular teaching approach, and never did any comparisons of test scores or any other sort of objective measures that might indicate it was actually effective). So, while that might be a good place to publish outcomes of applying various teaching techniques to the nursing curriculum, I don't think it's a particularly good place to look to see what more novel ideas are around that might work better but still be unknown to those who are actually out in the classrooms.
 
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Every once in a while the American Journal Of Physics publishes an issue on education. The monthly magazine/journal The Physics Teacher is dedicated to that issue also.
 
http://www.sigcse.org/

ACM's Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education

it's not exactly about physics but I think the fields have certain similarities.
 
NSTA (National Science Teacher's Association) publishes a series of magazines that target specific education levels and that present a broad range of science activities/classroom strategies often based on educational research.
 
buffordboy23 said:
Moonbear,

There are lots of education journals out there. I did a brief search on my university's server. Here is one that may interest you.

Advances in Health Sciences Education
http://www.springer.com/education/journal/10459

Thanks. I know there are a lot, but like any field, some journals are better than others. I'm kind of asking for some help sorting the wheat from the chaff. For example, is there an education journal that is a "must read" for everyone doing education research? Somewhat like Science and Nature are for scientists...everyone should know those two journals exist and peruse them every so often to keep current. On the other hand, there are some obscure journals in my field that would show up on a library search, but I'd never recommend to someone trying to learn what's really novel or as examples of strong research in the field.

So, I guess I was hoping for a bit more guidance beyond just pulling up a list of every journal from my library that has "Education" in the title.

I know I'm being vague. I'm just trying to get a handle on this since it's a new field for me to be researching. Basically, I don't want to end up sounding like a crackpot as I develop educational research projects simply for lack of realizing some journals are more hopelessly behind the times or let through weaker studies than others, or overlook a key journal in the field where I would have found out that all my ideas have already been done. And, since I wasn't sure who else around here might read these journals, I figured it would be useful for more generalized responses that could help anyone teaching sciences (if this gets overwhelming, I can always split it by subject later).

Do the NTSA's publications target higher education, or just primary and secondary education? If they have one for higher education, I will look for it.
 
Moonbear,

Here you go:
http://www.nsta.org/college/?lid=hp

I can't speak for the quality of NSTA's college-level publication, but I found their middle school level series to be extremely helpful during my first few years of teaching. I once spent near a whole day at a university library photocopying activities/learning strategies from their database to use in my classroom.
 
buffordboy23 said:
Moonbear,

Here you go:
http://www.nsta.org/college/?lid=hp

I can't speak for the quality of NSTA's college-level publication, but I found their middle school level series to be extremely helpful during my first few years of teaching. I once spent near a whole day at a university library photocopying activities/learning strategies from their database to use in my classroom.

Thanks! And I found that Journal of Health Sciences Education to be a great resource. I've been practically devouring articles from that journal this week. They seem to be much better controlled studies than some of the other journals I've come across, and certainly applicable to my interests. Much appreciated!
 
  • #10
Dr Transport said:
Every once in a while the American Journal Of Physics publishes an issue on education. The monthly magazine/journal The Physics Teacher is dedicated to that issue also.

Some links:

American Journal of Physics
http://scitation.aip.org/ajp/

Physics Teacher
http://scitation.aip.org/tpt/

Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research
http://prst-per.aps.org/


Here's a list I stumbled upon (but have not gone through):
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~rudged/journals.html
 
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