Editorial

Citation

Hobson, A.J., Searby, L.J., Harrison, L. and Firth, P. (2016), "Editorial", International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 282-286. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-10-2016-0068

As we reflect on the content of the fifth volume of the International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education (IJMCE), we are delighted to have published, in 2016, another 21 articles on mentoring and coaching in a variety of educational contexts, written by leading mentoring and coaching scholars from around the globe.

Volume 5 Issues 1-3

In the first two issues of Volume 5, we published papers dealing with different aspects of coaching for schoolchildren, teachers and leaders, and of mentoring for early career school teachers and for higher education faculty (academics). The specific foci of some of these articles included: facilitating school leaders’ and teachers’ professional development through coaching; facilitating mentoring through the use of creative technologies; the impact of online mentor education; the impact of mentoring on pre-service teachers’ identity formation; the phenomenon of judgementoring; and the case for a new (“ONSIDE”) mentoring framework for early career teachers. The authors of these papers hail from Ireland, the USA, Cyprus, Sweden, Australia and England.

Volume 5 Issue 3 was a special issue, guest edited by Linda Searby and Denise Armstrong, that focussed on “Supporting the development and professional growth of middle space educational leaders through mentoring”. The guest editors, who both conduct research with assistant principals (or deputy head teachers), sought to bring together others who share research interests in assistant school leaders who are situated in a somewhat ambiguous “middle space” of leadership. Articles in the special issue, authored by leading academics from the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and New Zealand, highlighted: the role of mentoring in preparing middle space school leaders; exemplary programmes internationally that support the assistant principal in facing the challenges of middle space leadership; and the rationale for continuing to give attention to the mentoring needs of this population.

Volume 5 Issue 4

In the first article of this fourth and final issue of Volume 5, Megan Tschannen-Moran and Carol Carter discuss the nature and outcomes of a mixed-method study which sought to explore whether the emotional intelligence (EI) of instructional coaches could be improved with training, as well as how instructional coaches perceive the relevance of EI to their success as coaches. The second article, by Rebecca Eliahoo, draws on critical incident analysis to explore barriers and dilemmas faced by novice mentors of new teachers in post-compulsory education in England.

In the third article of this issue, Christine Eastman provides a fascinating account of how literary fiction was used with a cohort of postgraduate students as a source of hypothetical scenarios designed to simulate workplace problems and provide a simulative context in which coaching students could apply theoretical models to make-believe scenarios. In the fourth article, Patricia Castanheira highlights key findings and implications of her meta-synthesis of 37 papers on mentoring for educators’ professional learning and development – papers which were published in Volumes 1-4 of this journal.

IJMCE usage and rising status

It gives us great satisfaction to note that IJMCE, as a leading international journal in its field, is increasingly recognised by a variety of indicators. Journal usage goes from strength to strength and is on track to exceed 10,000 downloads this year, as evidenced in Table I.

IJMCE publishes papers from around the world that are also accessed by readers from all parts of the world, thus demonstrating the true international nature of the journal. The top countries with readers accessing articles are:

• USA (14 per cent).

• UK (11 per cent).

• China (8 per cent).

• India (6 per cent).

• Germany (5 per cent).

• Australia (4 per cent).

• Malaysia (4 per cent).

• Brazil (3 per cent).

• Canada (2 per cent).

• Turkey (2 per cent).

So far this year the most downloaded article is “Mentor education: challenging mentors’ beliefs about mentoring” (Volume 4, Issue 2), by Eli Lejonberg, Eyvind Elstad and Knut-Andreas Christophersen, which has already received 563 downloads.

IJMCE’s inclusion in Scopus and other ranking systems provides an indication of the impact of the journal and the work of its authors. Using Scopus, we can see that year-on-year citations to the journal are increasing, as Table II shows.

Related to the journal’s increasing citations and impact, we are pleased to announce that IJMCE has recently been accepted for inclusion in Thomson Reuters’ new ranking system the “Emerging Sources Citation Index”. This is the first step towards gaining full Social Science Citation Index inclusion, and Thomson Reuters will be monitoring citation activity for the journal over the coming year or two.

Special issue proposals

As an editorial team, we would like to remind readers that we welcome proposals for additional special issues that focus on some specific aspect of mentoring and coaching in education. Proposals should include:

• a provisional title, aims and rationale, and explanation of the distinctive contribution the proposed issue would make to the international field of mentoring and coaching in education; and

• a biographical statement for the proposed guest editor(s), and information about other planned or potential authors of individual papers.

Please send ideas and proposals for special issues to the editor-in-chief at a.hobson@brighton.ac.uk. The editor will consult the IJMCE Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) about whether or not proposals should be accepted. Members of our EAB are keen, as we are, that all issues of the journal are truly international, with contributors from a number of different countries.

Thank you to our reviewers

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to all members of our reviewer panel who generously give their time, effort and expertise for the benefit of their peers and for advancing knowledge and practice in mentoring and coaching in education. Without their support, we would be unable to publish the high-quality original research that IJMCE provides. A sincere thank you from the editorial team and publisher to all of the following colleagues who have reviewed papers published in IJMCE Volumes 1-5:

Adams, Gill

Alston, Geleana

Andacao, Arvin

Arar, Khalid

Armstrong, Denise

Armstrong, Jane

Arshavskaya, Ekaterina

Asada, Tadashi

Ashbaker, Betty

Audsley, Linda

Augustine-Shaw, Donna

Ayoubi, Rami

Bailey, Moira

Ballaro, Julie

Ballenger, Julia

Bang, EunJin

Beltman, Susan

Bengtson, Ed

Bialka, Christa

Boak, George

Booth, Josephine

Bostrom, Lena

Boylan, Mark

Bozack, Amanda

Brailsford, Ian

Brinia, Vasiliki

Brown, Jill

Bullough, Robert

Burg, Carol

Carmouche, Millicent

Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina

Celoria, Davide

Chance, Lucinda

Clark, Lisa

Close, Paul

Clutterbuck, David

Cochrane, Matthew

Collet, Vicki

Confessore, Gary

Cox, Elaine

Craig, Linda

Crume, Alice

Crump, Cynthia

Cureton, Debra

D’Souza, Lisa

De Jong, David

Dickson, Donna

Dominguez, Nora

Dorner, Helga

Douglas, Jacqueline

Duckworth, Vicky

Duncan, Deirdre

Easley II, Jacob

Eastman, Christine

Edwards, Barbara

Emad, Reza

Erin Dalgic, Gulay

Evans, Angie

Eversole, Barbara

Farley, Helen

Fillery-Travis, Annette

Fitzgibbon, Karen

Fletcher, Sarah

Fransson, Göran

Gallant, Andrea

Garza, Rubén

George, Michael

Germain, Marie-Line

Giannakaki, Marina

Gibb, Gordon

Gilbert, Michael

Gilroy, Peter

Gilson, Tim

Giossi, Stella

Gobato, Paula

Godden, Lorraine

Gonzalez, Marlu

Haizlip, Breyan

Hales, Batch

Hamm, Lyle

Hayler, Mike

Haynes, Ray

Helyer, Ruth

Hills, Ruth

Houston, Don

Ivory, Gary

Jack, David

James-Ward, Cheryl

James, Helen

Jewett, Pamela

Johnson, Robin

Jones, Marion

Jones, Paul

Kalpazidou Schmidt, Evanthia

Kamm, Ruth

Kandiko, Camille

Karagiorgi, Yiasemina

Killion, Joellen

Koballa, Jr, Thomas

Kochan, Frances

Kutsyuruba, Benjamin

Kwan, Tammy

Kwong, Theresa

Ladyshewsky, Rick

Langdon, Frances

Lartec, Jane

Lee, John Chi-Kin

Lee, Margaret

Leonard, Dilys

Liakopoulou, Maria

Lindsay, Victoria

Lochmiller, Chad

Lofthouse, Rachel

Long, Jan

Lunsford, Laura

MacPhee, Deborah

Malderez, Angi

Marina, Brenda

Marsh, Brian

Mason, Christine

Maxwell, Bronwen

McIntyre, Joanna

McMahan, Sarah

Meeus, Wil

Meyer, Marcy

Mmereki, Rebana

Mooney-Simmie, Geraldine

Moore, Lesley

Morreale, Catherine

Mullen, Carol

Ng, Pak Tee

Nokes, Jeffery

Noufou, Ouedraogo

Noyes, Andrew

Orland-Barak, Lily

Oti, Janet

P. George, Manju

Parding, Karolina

Parylo, Oksana

Pedrana, Angela

Phillips, Joy

Poole, Brian

Rath, Jean

Reali, Aline

Reilly, Rosemary

Reissner, Stefanie

Rhodes, Christopher

Robinson, Sean

Salcedo-Potter, Nina

Sangiorgi, Sergio

Sarri, Katerini

Service, Brenda

Sherman Newcomb, Whitney

Short, Tom

Shum, Dominic

Sikalieh, Damary

Silver, Michael

Skidmore, Max

Skinner, Heather

Smardon, Dianne

Smith, Kari

Snowden, Michael

Solomon, Norm

Sorensen, Peter

Taylor, Rosemarye

Tomlinson, Peter

Tsai, Yau

Tyler, Andrea

Unterreiner, Ann

van Nieuwerburgh, Christian

Wakeman, Brian

Wall, Tony

Weiston, Torie

Williams, Joan

Wisker, Gina

Wyatt, Mark

Xie, Jianmei

Yirci, Ramazan

Young, Janet

Zepeda, Sally

Zugelder, Bryan

Table I

IJMCE downloads

Year	Downloads
2012 (IJMCE established)	1,708
2013	3,262
2014	4,977
2015	7,061
2016 (to 30 September)	8,060

Table II

IJMCE citations

Year	Number of citations in other Scopus ranked journals
2012	3
2013	22
2014	48
2015	62

Source: Scopus