As agricultural and extension educators, communicators and leaders around the world, we are used to studying change. We examine how to alter how people think, believe, feel and act – behavior change is what we seek – whether it be changes in how we grow crops, changes in how we educate, changes in how we ensure a sustainable environment for future generations, or changes in how we keep our communities safe. We are seekers of change; identifying best practices for educating and communicating with others so they can change and make the world a better place. Despite all this, change in our own lives, and the disruptions occurring across our global society, can feel overwhelming and extremely difficult to navigate.

Look through the August 2020 issue of the JIAEE and you will notice a wide variety of research projects that examine change in many capacities. First, you will find two Research Notes of interest: both of which examine ways to support educators and entrepreneurs as they strive to change their businesses and extension systems. These are brief, to the point, pieces that offer real world examples of the power of mentoring and building supportive systems to achieve goals.

Moving into our Feature Articles, I encourage those of you seeking new research methods to take a good look at the research projects conducted by Borron et al., Roberts et al., and Dobbins et al. that offer new scales and examples of less often used research methods. They are all intriguing pieces that provide insights into new ways of doing research. In addition, you will find two articles testing adoption models that could be applied around the world including the Integrated Extension Model, tested by Sarker et al. in Bangladesh, and the Concerns-based Adoption Model, tested by Mize et al. in Cambodia. There are also several studies examining the effectiveness of agricultural communications that are extremely informative as we are all being asked to come up with creative, distanced, ways of reaching our clientele.

I encourage you to read the articles in this August 2020 edition of JIAEE cover-to-cover recognizing that change and uncertainty can be difficult, but there are “far better things ahead.”

Alexa J. Lamm, PhD Executive Editor