Journals of the Century in Education

Education is a discipline with a lengthy history of journal publishing. Since education has an impact on nearly every area of life, the list of education journals exceeds well over 1,000 titles. Selecting a few that represent the key journals of the twentieth century was no simple task. Although a number of factors were considered, the final ones used were longevity, endurance, and being central to the study or practice of teaching and learning. Being indexed in a number of indexing sources was also given consideration as a reflection of importance. A number of studies have been published that discuss education journals, but generally were given limited consideration since so many of them address very targeted subdisciplines (Shulman and Margalit on special education; ¹ Keister’s review of the leading journals in higher education, ² for example). John C. Smart’s findings on the correlation between quality and citation rates of education journals suggests that the relationship is weaker in education than it is in other disciplines. ³ Accordingly, emphasis was placed on those journals demonstrating longevity and significance rather than high citation rates. Nonetheless, an indication of the impact factor recorded by ISI’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is listed in parentheses after those titles that had a rating. Ninety-nine journals within education and educational research were listed within JCR; thirty-seven journals were listed under the category of “psychology, educational”; and, twenty journals were listed separately for special education in JCR. While there are a number of exceptional journals that could easily be included in the following list, those that finally were chosen epitomize journals making a lasting contribution over several decades. The following seven categories contain thirty -four journals of major importance to the field of education. Of the many categories and topics that are not included in this list, that lack 20does not indicate an absence of important journals, but rather that the available journals do not meet the criteria above.