Comment: A source of questions

ECTJ, VOL. 33, NO. 1, PAGES 66-69 ISSN 0148-5806 A few years back, at the AECT conference in Philadelphia, Robert Heinich, then ECTJ editor, asked Steve Kerr and me to meet with him to discuss a possible theme issue for the journal that would address the social aspects of educational communication and technology. The more the three of us talked, the more it seemed as if the topic eluded precise definition. We were not altogether certain what "social aspects" meant, nor are we yet for that matter. Our attempts that day at formulating a manageable project were largely unsuccessful. But we came away from the meeting with the same strong feeling we had before it, that, as Heinich put it, "there were other kinds of research we should be doing and reporting in the journal beyond our current bugunder-the-microscope" approach. As we met in Philadelphia, type was being set on the first of two lengthy articles by Egon Guba (1981; Guba & Lincoln, 1982) that would subsequently appear in this journal. Judging from presentations made at AECT conferences since the publication of Guba's articles, his ideas have had a notable influence on the thinking of people in our field.