The Rwandan Journal of Education

The Rwandan Journal of Education (RJE) is a peer-reviewed journal, based at the University of Rwanda – College of Education. It publishes original manuscripts, and it accords priority to quality articles with education themes.

Historical background

It was initiated by Dr. Evariste Karangwa when he was appointed the Director of Postgraduate Studies and Research of former Kigali Institute of Education (KIE), since 30th July 2012 as part of his responsibilities. The journal is registered internationally as Rwandan Journal of education (Rwandan j. educ) with International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), and was accorded the RDB copy right certificate since its 1st copy Vol. 1, No 1 (2012) available on : https://www.ajol.info/index.php/rje/issue/archive

Aims, missions and audience of the journal

For any journal to be accredited by any legal organ nationally or internationally, it has to prove worthy its editorial policy, objectives and guidelines. Thus, RJE fielded itself as a journal focused on education and related scholarly fields that include :

Research and Evaluation – Traditional, scholarly articles that use empirical data or quantitative (e.g., statistical and survey methods) and/or qualitative (e.g., case studies) methods.
Professional Development - Articles that take advantage of the author’s particular expertise on a subject that will benefit educational career performance of the wider society.
Commentary - Analytical and researched pieces that expound critically on educational issues of importance to professionals and practitioners.
Review - Critiques of educational publications (journal articles, books, software/hardware, or anything else) that would be appropriate for the audience of the Rwandan Journal of Education (RJE).

To ensure quality publications, all manuscript submissions to RJE are duly blinded of the author’s identifications ; pre-edited and scanned for plagiarism ; peer-reviewed ; and successful articles are accepted for publication upon the author (s)’s signatory agreement to transfer all copyrights to RJE (including full and exclusive rights to the publication in all media, electronic databases, microfilms, and anthologies). By 2017, its policy focus, coverage, and the quality of publications, had made RJE one of the most outstanding journals of education in the sub-region, attracting readers and contributors from a range of scholarly communities, constituting 60% international authors.

The relationship between UR-CE and the journal

RJE is the initiative and product of UR-CE and his daily management is under the responsibility of the Research and Innovation Directorate.
Individual academics and departments of former KIE (Current UR-CE) had endeavored to initiate newsletters and/or journals in French or English since 1998, because they all shared a view that it is their obligation to advance related knowledge. However, these did not go beyond the 1st issue or just stopped at the idea. After all those tentative and failures to regularly produce an institution journal, the management of the former Kigali Institute of Education (now, UR-College of Education) entrusted its directorate of Postgraduate Studies and Research (now the Research and Innovation Unit) of coordinating the journal production.

This journal has an Editorial Board appointed by the College Management on request of the Director of Research and Innovation, to support in the journal activities. Moreover, a journal needs a variety of expertise to produce quality articles, thus RJE has some reviewers identified from UR-CE community members.

The Rwandan Journal of Education achievements up to date

When the journal was initiated, the institution was aware of the previous unfortunate initiatives and the daunting task and challenges involved in Journal publications. Practically working single handedly, the Editorial Board worked on what the previous initiatives had ignored : The Editorial Board developed RJE publication and peer-review guidelines, sought KIE Senate validations, and upon the publication of the 1st issue, it applied and was accorded ISSN : 2227-9148 (for hard copy) and eISSN : 2312-9239 (for online) publications. With these, RJE was recognized as an international serial journal, was quickly indexed and published by African Journals OnLine (AJOL) (Dr Karangwa).

Since, then, the following RJE issues are published https://www.ajol.info/index.php/rje/issue/archive:
Vol. 5, No 1 (2021) (143 Pages)
Vol. 4, No 2 (2018) (93 Pages)
Vol. 4, No 1 (2017) (79 Pages)
Vol. 3, No 2 (2016) (77 Pages)
Vol. 3, No 1 (2015) (116 Pages)
Vol. 2, No 2 (2014) (105 Pages)
Vol. 2, No 1 (2014) (95 Pages)
Vol. 1, No 2 (2013) (85 Pages)
Vol. 1, No 1 (2012) (83 Pages)

The Founding Chief Editor of the Rwandan Journal of Education, Dr Evariste Karangwa, was assigned other duties in 2014 as a School Dean, thus he could not combine both demanding responsibilities for a long time. Consequently, since December 2018, the responsibility of the Rwandan Journal of Education is with the UR-CE Directorate of Research and Innovation whose Director, Assoc. Professor Eugene Ndabaga, is also since then, the new RJE Chief Editor.

However, due to the 2017 university restructuring and its subsequent changes ; the journal production was done in a challenging working environment as well. It was not easy for a journal which used to be in hands of a Publication Officer, to keep the normal flow of volumes and issues when this tusk was combined with others and assigned to the only staff of the Research and Innovation Unit. It took more than a year for the new Editorial Board & the Directorate of Research and Innovation to produce another volume of the journal and thanks to the support of the founding Chief Editor. But currently, the journal is on track again.

The journal plan for the future

With the appointment of a new Editorial Board team in May 2019 ; followed by the merger of the journal production daily tasks with those of the Research and Innovation Unit available staff member, the journal activities started by updating some journal key documents such as publication guidelines, peer review guidelines, etc. Then, the journal activities resumed with simultaneously reviewing the suspended manuscripts and the reception of new manuscripts. As a result, a new volume was submitted to African Journal Online for publication in December 2020 and was published early in January 2021.

The journal production management team plans to make it a biannual journal (produced twice a year). But this requires a high commitment of all role players being authors, editorial board members, the journal administration, reviewers, etc.
Submission of manuscript
RJE welcomes submission of unpublished manuscripts on pertinent educational issues that will stimulate and/or enrich discussion forums on improving quality in all aspects of education including teaching and learning programs, processes, governance, management and others.

All interested educators and scholars are encouraged to submit their manuscripts to the Chief Editor’s offices as indicated by the journal guidelines. For any other details, prospective article contributors can liaise with the Chief Editor’s office on the following address : rje@ur.ac.rw and wrceresearchin@gmail.com. The same email addresses are used to submit manuscripts. The submission of manuscripts for publication is always open, and for some particular reasons, the journal EB can set a period for submission of manuscripts to appear in a special issue.

The Chief Editor reiterates that only article submissions that conform to RJE guidelines will be accepted.