Dialog, 22(1),  
Copyright © 2019,  
ISSN: 1930-9325 

 

It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve as the editor of Dialog. I have decided it is time to 

move out of the editor role to pursue other professional commitments. My time as editor has 

been marked by both change and progress for the journal. While the National Head Start 

Association was unable to continue their support of the paper version of the journal, they have 

continued to be connected to the journal and provide in-kind support for our work. We 

transitioned the journal to an open access online publication. We also secured the support of the 

Center for Educational Measurement and Evaluation within the Cato College of Education at 

UNC Charlotte and have used the university platform for digital scholarship to give the journal a 

permanent home.  

 

From a content perspective, we have continued and expanded the tradition of including research-

to-practice summaries with each research article. We have also established Dialog as a forum for 

high quality qualitative research that presents the subjective experiences of Head Start teachers, 

parents, children, and administrators. We have featured a wide range of topics over the years and 

have always attempted to provide innovative research articles that are both of interest to the early 

childhood education profession and useful to the Head Start community. 

 

Going forward, there is still much work to do and researchers can contribute to our ongoing 

understanding of the challenges Head Start programs continue to face, such as serving dual 

language learners and families from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds and negotiating 

partnerships within communities with changing family demographics. In addition, the work of 

teachers is as stressful and challenging as ever. Early childhood programs in general face 

ongoing challenges related to professionalizing the workforce, raising salaries and benefits, and 

retaining high quality teachers. 

 

It is my hope that the journal can continue to feature research studies that address the reliability, 

validity, and cultural sensitivity of early childhood assessment systems. I plan to remain on the 

editorial board and look forward to focusing on editorial assignments in this area. As a 

profession, we can support teachers by helping insure that the assessment resources they have 

available to them are practically feasible to implement, and yield information that is valid, useful 

for instructional planning purposes, and actionable. Dialog can be a forum for research evidence 

that supports high quality assessment practices in the early childhood classroom. 

 

It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Rebecca Shore as our new editor. Rebecca is a professor of 

educational leadership at UNC Charlotte and is the author of numerous articles and books on 

child development. She is a passionate advocate for high quality early childhood education and 

has a keen appreciation for the value of developmentally appropriate and cognitively stimulating 

programming for young children. She has also held a wide range of positions in the education 

field including teacher and principal. I am confident that under her leadership the journal will be 

in excellent hands and will continue to prosper for years to come. 

 

Sincerely, 

Dr. Richard G. Lambert 

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR