About the Journal
Focus and Scope
The mission of The Dialog: A Journal for Inclusive Early Childhood Professionals is to support pre-service and ongoing early childhood personnel preparation for inclusion by: a) offering a quality, accessible outlet for dissemination of research results to the early childhood community, b) ensuring that research results are effectively translated for practice, personnel preparation, and policy, and c) providing a forum for communication between researchers, faculty, families, and pre-service and in-service practitioners.
The Dialog is specifically interested in manuscripts that highlight innovative and/or evidence-based practices of early childhood programs and personnel preparation that aim to produce positive outcomes for young children and their families. Areas of consideration include, but are not limited to: child development; early childhood mental health; family support and resiliency; multicultural and multilingual issues; novel measures, methods, and analytic strategies; parenting; parent engagement; community issues (e.g., neighborhood violence, homelessness, resource management); early childhood education; early intervention; early childhood special education; assessment and evaluation; curriculum and instruction; meaningful inclusion; equity; transitions; and systemic program and policy issues.
The Dialog solicits conceptual articles, practice or program descriptions (i.e., Dialogs from the field), reviews of the literature, and reports of original research. We are particularly interested in research built on meaningful partnerships that may include the joint development of research questions, design, methods, measures, and implementation. Research submitted to The Dialog should clearly delineate applications to practice, personnel preparation, and/or policy. Manuscripts are welcomed from the many fields and disciplines involved in the early childhood context such as education, special education, psychology, sociology, pediatrics, family medicine, public health, psychiatry, nursing, social work, dentistry, anthropology, law, epidemiology, public policy, and allied health.
To intentionally support the effective translation of research to practice and preparation, authors of research manuscripts accepted for publication will be asked to create a separate research-to-practice article summarizing their research findings for use by practitioners and/or in personnel preparation. This article will be subjected to an abbreviated blind peer review and published in the same issue of The Dialog: A Journal for Inclusive Early Childhood Professionals as the research article.
Peer Review Process
All articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and double blind review by at least two anonymous referees.
Publication Frequency
The Dialog publishes three issues per year.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Sponsors
Center for Educational Measurement and Evaluation
Journal History
Greg Powell, as director of the Research and Evaluation Division of the National Head Start Association (NHSA), started and edited NHSA Research Quarterly. After several years, NHSA Research Quarterly was renamed the NHSA Dialog: A Research-to-Practice Journal for the Early Intervention Field. Greg Powell served as the first Editor. After a few years, Gregg recruited Faith Lamb-Parker who was then at Columbia University to serve as the journal's second editor. In August 2002, Ben Allen succeeded Greg Powell as the Research and Evaluation Director at NHSA. Barbara Burns of the University of Kentucky succeeded Faith Lamb-Parker as its editor and served until 2007. Up until 2005, the journal was largely an in-house production, but Ben Allen, upon the advice of Dr. Edward Zigler at Yale University, sought out a major publisher for the journal to reduce production costs and broaden its readership domestically and internationally. Under the sponsorship of NHSA, Ben Allen concluded a multi-year publication agreement with Taylor & Francis, LLC in 2006. Richard Lambert of UNC Charlotte served as editor from 2008 - 2020. NHSA sponsored the journal until 2012, Volume 15. Starting with Volume 16, Issue 1, 2013, the journal became an open access online journal sponsored by the Center for Educational Measurement and Evaluation and published by J. Murrey Atkins Library Digital Publishing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC).
In 2024, a revitalization process was initiated and the journal welcomed submissions for a special issue on early childhood educator preparation for inclusion under the direction of Dr. Ann Mickelson who joined the journal in 2023 as editor. The response to the call was robust, underscoring the need for more outlets for this genre of research.
As part of the revitalization process, the journal was renamed, The Dialog: A Journal for Inclusive Early Childhood Professionals in 2025 under the direction of Dr. Ann Mickelson as Editor-in-Chief. This new name was chosen to both honor the history of the journal and pave a path for the journal’s future aim of supporting preservice and ongoing early childhood personnel preparation.
