Teaching Innovations in Management Education Research Journals: Reflecting on JME’s Journey

In a world fraught with Grand Challenges, there is a renewed urgency in innovating in both what and how we teach. Teaching innovations (TI) are a vital aspect of our scholarly impact. In this paper, we explore how the maturation of the field and the calls for increased rigor have influenced TI articles. First, we examined the evolution of JME’s editorial policy regarding TI. We find that two major requirements for TI articles have been gradually emphasized: a stronger grounding in the literature, and more robust evidence of effectiveness. Second, we explored how current TI articles have responded to these requirements, by analyzing the TI articles published in JME from 2014 to 2023. While some attempts to meet these new requirements were observed, our findings indicate that the literature could be more fully leveraged and that the evidence of effectiveness presented remains weak. We argue that JME should explicitly affirm its identity as a research journal, which would require that TI articles adopt a research mindset. We outline the overall characteristics of this research mindset, along with specific requirements as they apply to TI articles. Implications for the community, TI articles, and JME are discussed.