Editorial

Editorial Research and Practice: Everything Is Connected For more than 150 years the American Annals of the Deaf has been a professional journal dedicated to quality in education and in related services for children and adults who are deaf or hard of hearing. As such, the Annals has a broad charge from the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf and the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf to be a source both for the development of knowledge and for the dissemination of practical information. We could roughly dichotomize the articles that appear in the Annals into "research " and "practice" categories. On the one hand there would be qualitative and quantitative studies involving quasi-experimental and correlational research, interviews and questionnaires, observational reports, and even literature reviews. On the other, there would be position papers, recommendations for curricular materials for the classroom, and suggestions for improving reading skills. Of course, some articles do not fit easily into a category. Regular readers of the Annals are aware that the articles we publish represent a variety of interests and orientations that encompasses the complete range from research to application. This is somewhat different from many journals that may focus exclusively on research or application. Any issue of the Annals will contain articles addressing either research or practice and sometimes both. Because we publish only six to eight articles per issue, the mix may vary from issue to issue, but there is a balance over time. One may think of research and practice as being separate and discrete and, unfortunately, in fact they frequently are. This may be the case in "basic" research, where investigators have no interest in application or do not have the background to follow the implications of their findings to the classroom, home or other areas. Ideally there is a progression in the behavioral sciences, of which education is one, from research to development to demonstration to application to adaptation into the classroom , home, or some other setting. Each step of the way researchers and practitioners would interact with the results of research informing practice and the results of practice leading to more, and better, applied research. Clearly, this is not the reality that any of us face. If it were true to some small extent in the past, it certainly is not now. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act reauthorization , for example, mandates that all children, regardless of disability, must have access to the general education curriculum to the greatest extent possible. Developments in cochlear implants are leading many programs to rethink and revise their educational systems. Researchers now are constantly trying to catch up to developments and educational changes that have already occurred and over which educators of deaf and hard of hearing children have little or no control. In this situation research invariably follows practice and does not guide it, except possibly in modification of ongoing practices. The picture, however, is not all dark. There is an effective interaction between research and practice that can be documented in several areas if we examine articles that appear over a relatively short period of time. For example, in this issue's article "Suggestions for Preparing Itinerant Teachers ," John Luckner and Jennifer Howell note, that most teacher training programs continue to emphasize preparing students to teach in self-contained classrooms, while 83% of students who are deaf and hard of hearing are being served at least part-time in general education classrooms. They argue that changes in coursework and practicum experiences are needed to prepare teachers who will have responsibility for providing itinerant services. Based on interviews with 25 experienced itinerant teachers, the authors recommended changes in teacher preparation programs to adjust to the reality that educational placement practices have been significantly altered in the past generation. A reader may agree or disagree with the conclusions, but the point is that any article should be read in a broader context. There is a literature of research and opinion that provides a background for the article. We all know of the Volume 147, No. 3, 2002 American Annals of the Deaf Editorial extensive research literature documenting the changes in school placement over the past 20...