Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT) is 50 years old in 2019. It is the journal owned by the learned society, Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) which turns 50 in 2020.
This celebration issue is dedicated to our contributors and readers and to all PESA members who have worked for EPAT in one capacity or another as editor, reviewer, or contributor. Fittingly the issue is a democratic writing experiment with some 170 contributors from 27 countries. We are pleased in particular that the invitation encouraged scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan and realise that we will have to work harder to attract scholars from Africa, India, and the Middle East. The journal is now truly international.
This issue asks a cheeky question on the basis of feigned ignorance or Socratic disposition – ‘what comes after postmodernism in educational theory?’ The results are quite surprising because they indicate no single successor paradigm, but rather a hatching of overlapping family concepts, a sort of ‘family resemblance’ after Wittgenstein. There is a series of themes that suggest a reflective return to earlier forms of philosophical modernism and a number of attempts to reform postmodernism in terms of subjectivity, indeterminism, incompleteness, and relativity that point to characteristics of anti-foundationalism, anti-representationalism, historical genealogies, and relational ontologies. With postmodernism as a platform, scholars have devised family networks of interests that all emphasise a kind of theoretical ecologism: post-humanism, new materialism, post-colonialism, and post-capitalism. An interesting development is the way that non-western thinkers have attempted to experiment with postmodernism in relation to classical or indigenous systems. Altogether this is a pleasing experiment. It is philosophically inclusive, a kind of philosophical thought survey and rain gauge.
EPAT has come a long way in 50 years from its Australian beginnings with a home produced broadsheet and a couple of issues a year by Australian and New Zealand scholars, to now being international and a world leader in the field with 14 issues a year. We wish to thank our publishers, Routledge/Taylor and Francis and the production team who have recently relocated to the Melbourne office.
In the recent rankings, EPAT’s impact factor went from 0.56 to 0.864 – a massive jump in one year from 2016 to 2017 despite the dilution factor of producing 14 issues per year. Our priority has never been an impact factor ratio, but rather a focus on engaging in our world and creating opportunities for publication in our field and encouraging younger scholars who are often the thought leaders fresh from Ph.D. studies.
As President of PESA, I am happy to issue congratulations of the Society on this milestone achievement and to the Editor-In-Chief, Michael A Peters who has been editor for over 25 years, the Deputy Editors, Liz Jackson and Marek Tesar and to our Managing Editor Susanne Brighouse who are the nucleus of a larger network of Associate Editors and reviewers. It is hard to contemplate the next 50 years, especially with the technological disruption to academic publishing that is occurring currently. But one thing is clear, the peer-reviewed academic journal is required more today than even it was when it started in the mid-17th century, not just for the production of knowledge, but for the ability to offer criticism and to speak out. In the immediate term of the next ten years my hope, and I know it is Michael’s hope too, is to see the journal continue to flourish and to pass into the hands of younger scholars who are dedicated to the task. Fortunately, there are many such scholars with a considerable depth of talent in PESA.
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