Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community

Dear colleagues:

The Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community cordially invites you to submit a paper for inclusion in our themed issue on Building a Future for Education Equity Interventions. JPIC, in print since 1995, provides professionals with up-to-date information on effective programs for community intervention and prevention. With an emphasis on equity and community wellness, JPIC is of interest to community-engaged researchers, practitioners in the fields of health and education, and those involved in partnerships that span diverse localities and community spaces. The journal invites contributions from researchers, practitioners, and community-university partnerships using critical and participatory methods to change policies, practices, and the allocation of resources across settings and those that improve well-being quite broadly. JPIC is published by Taylor & Francis, Inc.

The year 2024 will mark seven decades after the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Political pushback to integration in some states resulted in school districts not ending segregation legally until the early 1970s. Similarly, schools in highly urban cities with high concentrations of neighborhood poverty remain segregated today. These seven decades have produced numerous federal reform efforts as well as school districts and researchers responding to “A Nation at Risk” (1983), “No Child Left Behind” (2001), and “Every Student Succeeds” (2015). Decades of evidence-based research in education have contributed to many new ideas adopted and used in education and schools across the U.S., yet out of the more than 40 million children enrolled in U.S. schools, those who are left behind and encounter risks to their academic remain disproportionately low-income, Black, Latinė, and Indigenous U.S. students (de Brey et al., 2019). Furthermore, the impact of the COVID pandemic revealed that Black, Latinė, and Indigenous U.S. students experienced further declines in reading and mathematics (The Nations Report Card, 2022). Addressing the root causes and preventing schools from leaving low-income, Black, Latinė, and Indigenous U.S. students behind require political will and ideological, educational shifts. Interventions continue to fail to address persistent educational inequities when they are largely generated by individuals who have little proximity to the lived experiences of low-income, Black, Latinė, and Indigenous U.S. students and their communities. Even more telling, a review of the What Works Clearinghouse (published by the Institute of Education Sciences) revealed that a significant portion of the proposed evidence-based interventions rarely included Black students (Graves, Phillips, Jones, & Johnson, 2021). Other reviewers note that while researchers have offered intervention recommendations that are culturally responsive to the needs of racially and economically marginalized students, such recommendations do not always translate into high-fidelity practices with positive outcomes (Fallon et al., 2022).

2024 will either mark another decade of the persistent opportunity and achievement gaps in the U.S., or it can spark a new way to imagine interventions, interventions that disrupt inequities in education. These interventions may call for positioning young people, their families, and communities as primary drivers of educational change and advancing equity. This call for manuscripts solicits original research (critical quantitative, qualitative, and transformative mixed methods) that employs an analysis of more multi-system and macro approaches to address the opportunity achievement gap and bring us closer to achieving educational equity. The special call openly invites manuscripts whose analysis brings research closer to ecologically valid interventions, distributive justice, and equity. While the themed issue acknowledges the significance of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, racial and class segregation and lingering negative consequences on the lives of low-income, Black, immigrant, and Indigenous students is not only a U.S. issue but an international one. We invite international scholars and practitioners to submit their original research.

Benefits to Researchers and Practitioners: Despite the political climate of our nation and national campaign to make it illegal to teach the truth about race and racism and to remove a focus on socioemotional learning in schools, Black, Latinė, immigrant, and Indigenous children will comprise the majority of students enrolled in U.S. schools. Thus, researchers and practitioners seeking to address inequities in education and to reduce the academic opportunity gap in this nation and across other nations like Canada, the UK, and Australia may strongly desire to replicate and adapt studies that have implications on practice and systems change. Moreover, identifying how the use of critical quantitative, qualitative, and transformative mixed methods build evidence of change may drive the field forward to adopt new methodologies that contribute to equity and more positive educational outcomes for low-income, Black, Latinė, immigrant, and Indigenous students.

Authors who wish to submit their papers should use the submission portal on the journal’s website. For questions related to the submission, please contact Guest Editor Dawn X. Henderson, PhD at [email protected]. Inquires about the journal can be directed to Editor-in-Chief Dr. Viola Judah at [email protected].

• Full paper Submission Period: June 1, 2023 - December 1, 2023 (Note: articles will be reviewed on a rolling basis, earlier submissions are encouraged and will be published online when finalized prior to the Issue print publication).
• Peer Review & Decision Date: January 31, 2024 (or earlier)
• Final Version: March 15, 2024
• Estimated Publication: June, 2024

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article