Educational Leadership

Educational Leadership is the official journal of the ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), formed out of a merger in March 1943 of the Department of Supervision and Directors of Instruction of the National Education Association (NEA) and the Society for Curriculum Study to become the Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development of NEA, which changed its name to ASCD in 1946 and became an independent organization.

In October 1943 this new department established Educational Leadership as its journal. The publication committee consisted of the representatives from the public schools, education professors from a variety of universities, and the president of the Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development. The first editor was Ruth Cunningham, executive secretary of the Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

The content of the journal was targeted to the membership of this department: supervisors, school principals, professors of education, curriculum specialists, teachers, and superintendents of schools. The title for this journal, Educational Leadership, was chosen to appeal to those individuals who were visionary and who could energize their colleagues to move forward to tackle the problems inevitable in a changing educational world. Educational Leadership was published monthly from October through May. From its inception, Educational Leadership was a themed journal. The first issue, October 1943, was titled “Teaching in Wartime” and included topics related to the patriotic nature of teaching, the teacher shortage, helping emergency teachers, the joy of teaching, and the effects of the changing world on teaching.

ASCD continued to publish Educational Leadership as one of the benefits of membership in ASCD. As the journal developed under ASCD, the editor's role transformed from being the responsibility of the executive editor of ASCD to a fulltime position. The first full-time editor of Educational Leadership was Robert Leeper, who began his duties in 1950. Many of the features of the journal created under NEA were continued by ASCD: for example, themes continued to direct the content of the journal; columns focused on various curriculum concerns—“The New in Review”—and included new ideas in curriculum development, reviews of books, films, recordings, and programs and was edited by Alice Miel; I. Keith Tyler coordinated “Tools for Learning”; Henry Harap organized “Front Line in Education”; and Steve Corey developed the “Importance of People.” In 1949, Fred T. Wilhelm, executive secretary of ASCD, included the column “Curriculum Research,” which continued into the mid 1970s. Historically, at least one third of the issues of Educational Leadership from 1943 to 1964 were devoted to issues related to curriculum development.

Educational Leadership began and continues as a themed journal, soliciting articles focusing on pertinent issues of the time and serves as a source of current information on new ideas, controversial issues, social concerns, and research-based programs for those professionals who continue to work in the educational world.