English Research from 1984 to 2015: A Then, Newer, and Now Look through the Eyes of Our RTE Editorship

With delight at the chance to be at the center of change in our field, we assumed the editorship of RTE in February 1984, leaving in December 1991. These eight years were intellectually exciting and proved to be a period of scholarly growth for us personally as well as for the field. We were the fourth editors of RTE, preceded by Richard Braddock, Alan Purves, and Roy O'Donnell. During their editorship, RTE had grown from a twice-a-year journal to a quarterly, with increasing focus on high-level research and the emergence of a loyal and steady readership. During our term, circulation continued to climb and the journal's Social Science Citation Index rating increased from 17th to 6th place.We wanted to build upon our predecessors' base by extending the scope of issues and methodologies in ways that would reflect the changing nature of the field. It was our goal to increase interdisciplinary dialogue, and through it to broaden the topical, conceptual, and methodological base to include the research of, and attract the readership of, the broad array of professionals who were concerned with the intersections among language, learning, and contexts. We saw (and still see) the field of English as an interdisciplinary amalgam, calling on work in anthropology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics as well as literary scholarship-with smaller ties to other fields as well.We envisioned RTE as a mutual forum for sharing work and stimulating growth through increased scholarly interaction and growing familiarity across disciplines. We wanted it to become a gathering site for our colleagues to think, talk, write, and explore the issues of the day-to raise questions, open possibilities, and reshape our future. Given the social media of today, this undertaking seems easier than it was for us 31 years ago; however, our networking goals were similar. We hoped the journal's articles would influence both the informal discussions and the formal presentations at local and national conferences, as well as in graduate coursework, inservice workshops, and department and district-wide meetings. We wanted our colleagues to be engaged in the process of professional commitment to do and use research as a tool for exchange, growth, reflection, and action. In short, we wanted to "stir the pot. "Where did we start on this audacious plan? To begin with, we invited an array of interdisciplinary colleagues to sit on the editorial board. They were: James Britton, Roger Brown, Bertram Bruce, Robert Calfee, Charles Cooper, Jerome Harste, John R. Hayes, Shirley Brice Heath, Walter Kintsch, Robin Lakoff, David Olson, Alan Purves, Gordon Wells, and Merlin Wittrock. Also, we changed the more traditional editor's introductory pages about the contents and scope of the articles in each issue to an ongoing section titled "Musings. " Aside from the first and last issues, which were written by us both, we took alternating turns writing the column, always using what we were learning from the many manuscripts we read; the diverse scholars who reviewed them; the inquiries, concerns, and complaints we received; and the zeitgeist of the day to identify the conflicts and inconsistencies we wanted to share-as ideas we hoped would be examined in the professional arena.We used our first Musings (Langer & Applebee, 1984) as a "Cook's Tour" of several critical issues we felt had already emerged, and our last (Langer & Applebee, 1991) as a comment on how those issues had fared eight years later. Each of the Musings in between focused on a specific timely topic, chosen by whichever of us was the author. First, let's look at our big concerns in early 1984, late 1991, and now-some 31 years later-which include methodological narrowness, separation of process and product, inadequate conceptualization of teacher-as-researcher, the need for instructional research, and limited notions of instruction and development. Then we will comment on the field as it seems now and end with some concerns we feel need to be addressed. …