Why it is Important to Encourage Practicing Professionals to Become Authors

In February of 2009, the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB) published the first articles under the heading of Practice Perspectives. These articles featured work by three professionals who described how they taught reading to children or adults. Trina Brichter of West Virginia, Charla Rose Houston of North Carolina, and Lisa Serino of Arizona described how they motivated their reluctant readers. Their articles were the first of more than 65 Practice Perspectives that have been submitted for publication by practicing professionals to describe their successful practices. The feature reflects the commitment of the American Foundation of the Blind (AFB) to address the interests of professionals who work daily with people who have visual impairments. Since the inception of Practice Perspectives, JVIB has also continued to publish Practice Reports, which describe systematic exploration of a question or issue related to practice. These last few years, it has been my good fortune to be JVIB's associate editor for practice. In that role I have considered ways to encourage practicing professionals to become authors, so that these skilled professionals would share their insights into instructional practices that worked for them. Unlike many authors of full-length research articles, whose jobs require writing and research, practice authors write mainly because they have experiences or ideas to share with colleagues and the people they serve. Some authors e-mailed me or talked with me at conferences to say, "I have an idea. Do you think this would make a good article?" Others submitted their writing after reading the Information for JVIB Authors website at: . Most submissions were revised one or more times before publication, which is common for peer-reviewed professional articles. For many authors, the peer review process was daunting: most did not have prior experience with an anonymous reviewer reading their material, but they accepted and sometimes welcomed the suggestions of outside reviewers as well as my own recommendations. As a retired faculty member from The University of Arizona, now experiencing another retirement from my role as practice editor of JVIB, I sometimes reflect on the trail that our professional field has traveled since I entered the field of visual impairment in the 1970s. Topics that have been addressed by recent practice features speak to the degree to which the world of practicing professionals in visual impairment has changed since I entered it in 1972. The 1970s marked a time when legislative foundations created a new world of opportunity for people with disabilities, including those with visual impairments. Families of children with visual impairments no longer had to exert time and energy to convince their educational systems to allow their students to enter public schools and to receive an appropriate education after the passage of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Legislative policy established equal opportunities for individuals with and without disabilities, supported by team planning with families and individualized goals for each student. As a teacher at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, I remember both the anticipation and concern about the goals I recommended at those first meetings with teams and families--my first lEPs (Individualized Education Programs) were more than 20 pages long! Several recent practice authors have described the outcomes and challenges of implementing current systems of planning and service delivery, the foundations of which were created by this early legislation. Craig Phillips, Jeri Hile, and Traci Jardes described professional collaboration that effectively supported the team of a young man with deaf-blindness (2013). Superintendent William Daugherty of Texas School for the Blind (2014) described changes in their systems that created a strengthened linkage between the school and statewide educational agencies. …