Development Opportunities

Call for Papers: Thought & Action, the NEA Journal of Higher Education

Sponsored by: National Education Association

Deadline: Tuesday, June 1, 2010

“Radical Transformations”
The Thought & Action Review Panel invites submissions for “Radical Transformations,” a Special Focus section in the 2010 edition of Thought & Action, the higher education journal of the National Education Association.

The term radical transformations is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, higher education has been buffeted over the past few decades by a series of radical transformations:

• wholesale changes in how the public higher education enterprise is financed
• less institutional support from states and increased reliance on tuition
• introduction of customer-satisfaction business models into institutional governance
• changes in the employment characteristics of the faculty with fewer tenure-track appointments and increased reliance on part-time faculty
• weakening of the traditional discipline-based department structure
• proliferation of online approaches to instruction, and more.

On the other hand, the term “radical” also has meaning in a political sense—as in the need for radical transformations to create a more just, equitable, and democratic world. Should higher education have a radical impact on students and society? Or should higher education simply impart a credential and a few useful skills, leaving those who pass through essentially as it found them? Can we have a radical transformation that is both intellectual and technological?

To respond to these questions, we are soliciting articles on a variety of topics. Is higher education at a crossroads of some sort? Have we had enough of administrators, pundits, and politicians setting the agenda for higher education? What should be the role of intellectuals and scholarship in creating the future? How might the nation’s professoriate, spearheaded by its unions—most importantly to us, the National Education Association—launch an education renaissance? How might new coalitions of faculty, staff, and students in higher education redefine the academy?

Thought & Action, with a readership of over 150,000, seeks to provide its readers with theoretical and practical information on issues in higher education that are important to higher education faculty and staff members of the National Education Association.

We encourage the submission of articles or proposals related to these themes and welcome work from new scholars as well as seasoned ones. Please send submissions to the address below. Further information and guidelines are available at the website below.

• View Additional Information on the Call for Papers: Thought & Action, the NEA Journal of Higher Education Development Opportunity

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