The Evolution of an Education Journal: A Genre Study

Abstract

This article reports on a study of the evolution of an education joumal over a 43-year period. The journal began life in 1954 as The Slow Learning Child, became The Exceptional Child in 1976, and continues today as The Inter-national Journal of Disability, Development, and Education. The chang-ing title itself suggests an evolution in consciousness and constituency that provides the background for the study. Despite an initial determination to serve both university-and school-based educators, a rhetorical analysis of the joumal's changing discourse demonstrates a gradual shift away from the classroom and the concerns of practitioners and toward the discourse of ex-perimental research and the knowledge it produces.

Keywords

• disability
• education