Call for Submissions: K-12 Online Distance Education: Issues and Frameworks

I. A statement of the special edition theme

The theme of this special edition is issues and frameworks for K-12 online distance education, including teacher preparation and professional development, successful programs, principled practices, policy formation and implications, and the potential for understanding this phenomenon with emerging theoretical frameworks. Other topics could include the special needs of K-12 online teachers, issues specific to a content area, or the evaluation of related professional development programs.

II. Its relevance to the scope and coverage of the journal

Because American Journal of Distance Education was one of the first journals to focus on sound educational practice within the field of distance learning, the emerging field of K-12 online distance education represents a natural association within the original scope. The great promise of this edition lies in its potential to provide articles of interest to a wide and diverse audience, including researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Manuscripts that explore the relationship between emerging theoretical frameworks and this unique application of distance education are potentially seminal pieces of scholarship.

III. The need for a focus on the theme

With the increasing popularity and accessibility of the Internet and Internet-based technologies, along with the need for a diverse group of students to have alternative means to complete their education, there is a major push for K-12 schools to offer online courses and entire programs. These virtual schools have been in existence since the proliferation of the Internet in the 1990s, and they continue to grow in popularity as a realistic alternative to traditional education. Watson, Murin, Vashaw, Gemin, and Rapp (2011) report that all 50 states and the District of Columbia offer their K-12 students online learning experiences.

Though the number of courses and participating teachers and students are growing at a tremendous rate, what we know about this phenomenon empirically and how we understand it theoretically are dynamic and emerging. New knowledge from this field affords tremendous potential for positive feedback into the design and delivery of existing programs as well as future policy making. This special edition positions American Journal of Distance Education as a principal forum for the scholarly discourse about this burgeoning field.

IV. Submissions

This special issue of AJDE encourages the submission of articles in the following areas: pedagogies of teaching in K-12 online distance learning, about management and administration of programs; policies, theories, and values that drive distance education; working with special populations in K-12 distance education settings. Articles should be based on research and all methods and approaches to research are welcome.

Authors are encouraged to contact the guest editors prior to submission to ensure the appropriateness of their work for this particular venue. Authors should also go online to http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/hajd and read “Guidelines for Authors.” In addition, authors are encouraged to review back issues of the American Journal of Distance Education to familiarize themselves with the journal and previously published articles focused on K-12 online learning. Submitted work should be appropriately grounded in a review of existing literature. Submissions will be accepted with the understanding that they will be subject to review and editorial revision and that they neither have been nor will be published elsewhere. Manuscripts should not exceed 5,000 words.

The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition, should be used as the guide for manuscript style. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically by e-mail as an attachment in Word format to ajde.k12online@gmail.com

V. Guest Editors

Leanna Archambault, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, leanna.archambault@asu.edu

Michael Barbour, Assistant Professor, Wayne State University, mkbarbour@gmail.com

Meredith DiPietro, University of North Carolina – Charlotte, mdipietr@uncc.edu

Deadline for submission: May 1, 2012

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Michael K. Barbour, Assistant Professor
Instructional Technology/Education, Evaluation & Research – Wayne State University

mkbarbour-at-gmail-dot-com / http://www.michaelbarbour.com
Virtual School Meanderings – http://virtualschooling.wordpress.com

Ph.D., University of Georgia
M.Ed., Memorial University of Newfoundland
B.Ed., Memorial University of Newfoundla