Expanding the Foundation: Climate Change and Opportunities for Educational Research

Human-caused climate change is a dominant global challenge. Unlike other disciplines and fields, there has as yet been only limited attention to climate change in educational research generally, and in educational foundations in particular. Education is key to assisting humanity in mitigating and adapting to climate change, and educational researchers working within diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions and a broad array of research contexts need to engage in this most pressing of challenges. We argue that the field needs a new commitment to a form of educational justice appropriately scaled to the size of the challenge we face. We address this gap by reviewing current thinking on the human dimensions of climate change and summarizing what research has been conducted in the area of climate change education as a means of identifying a range of possibilities for educational research and praxis.     

Directions for Integration in Australia: Overview of a Report to the Commonwealth Schools Commission. Part II.

Drawing upon information from a national survey, this paper examines the extent to which integration is being achieved for children with disabilities in Australian schools. Technical and organizational issues leading to identification of major barriers to integration together with possible strategies to overcome these are discussed. A need for policy‐oriented research in this field is identified, particularly the provision of accurate prevalence figures and other data to help monitor the impact of policy. Overall, there is evidence of a national movement towards integration but typically this is occurring within a context of inadequate policy formulation, organizational development and resource provision.     

Commentary on Vollmeyer and Rheinberg: Putting the Teacher in Research on Self-Regulated Learning

In this commentary, Corno discusses Vollmeyer and Rheinberg’s evidence from the perspective of related work in educational psychology. Relevant new terms provide background for understanding connections between the language used by Vollmeyer and Rheinberg and that of educational psychologists. The author uses results from research on teaching for self-regulated learning to suggest a new direction for Vollmeyer and Rheinberg—investigation of instructional events that promote processes in their model.     

Key challenges and future directions for educational research on scientific argumentation

At the 2015 NARST: A Worldwide Organization for Improving Science Teaching and Learning Through Research Annual International Conference, a group of scholars held an extended pre‐conference workshop to discuss key challenges and future directions faced by argumentation researchers around the world. This wide‐ranging group of facilitators and participants represented varying perspectives and experiences with argumentation research. Learning artifacts from the workshop were collected and analyzed utilizing multiple qualitative coding techniques. Analysis of these artifacts revealed five major themes that emerged from the NARST workshop describing this group of scholars’ views on current issues and potential directions for the field of argumentation research. These themes center on: (i) establishing a classroom culture that values argumentation; (ii) how differing theoretical frameworks challenge how researchers communicate findings; (iii) the challenge of assessing various aspects of scientific argumentation in a valid and reliable fashion; (iv) pedagogical challenges in supporting student discourse and social collaboration; and (v) challenges concerning the professional development of teachers. Each of these themes is described using direct quotes from the workshop artifacts, and implications for future research in argumentation are discussed. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 55: 5–18, 2018     

Reconciling theory, research, and practice: A models and modelling perspective

This paper addresses one approach to reconciling theory, research, and practice,namely, a multitiered teaching experiment involving a models and modelling approach to learning. The four-tiered teaching experiment explored in this paper involves participants at different levels of development who work interdependently towards the common goal of finding meaning in, and learning from, their respective experiences. The research examined here is concerned with the design and implementation of experiences that maximise learning at each level. These experiences involve the construction and application of models, which are used to describe, make sense of, explain, or predict the behaviour of some complex system. Two classroom studies are presented to illustrate how a theory of models and modelling can guide the development and implementation of a multitiered teaching experiment. A focus on the teachers' construction of models of teaching and learning is presented to illustrate how theory and research can assist the practice of classroom teachers.