Understanding Early Childhood Special Education through a Journal: 11 Years of INT-JECSE

Abstract

Field specific scientific journals do not only serve as a source of information to guide thepractice in that field but also as a transmitter to dispense information distilled from practice.This is how they can facilitate setting and directing the trends in the field. This study aimedto identify the trends in methods and research subjects across the field of early childhoodspecial education (ECSE) by analyzing the articles published in International Journal ofEarly Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE) within the last 11 years. Designed as ajournal analysis, the study has converted demographic and methodological features, andsubject areas of 133 articles published in INT-JECSE into a data set via Article DescriptionForm. Data regarding demographic and methodological features of all the articles havebeen analyzed via quantitative descriptive analysis whereas their subjects have been examined through content analysis. As for demographic analysis, the distribution of articlesvaried across years. Despite the high number of international and co-authored articles,those with an interdisciplinary orientation were scarce. With respect to methodology, nonintervention articles and those designed in line with quantitative methods outnumbered theothers. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder constituted the majority of research samples in all the articles. Subject areas of the articles have been grouped under eight themessuch as developmental areas/skills, parents, early intervention, teachers, ECSE systems,inclusion, assessment, and others. Based on the findings, it is deemed critical for the journal to include methodological approaches and research subjects in accordance with theirsize and density in theory and practice.