Learning from Freire can be a live-long endeavor, always adding humor, rigorous critical theory, and narrative. This article addresses the theoretical and cognitive ways in which Freire can be embraced. Moving far beyond banking education and fixed ideological notions of Freire's work, it is important to consider the tentative when reading and…

In this commentary, we argue that literacy research would be more productive if researchers had a clearer, more nuanced understanding of theory. Specifically, we argue that theory in a practice-oriented field is most fundamentally productive when it provides instrumental guidance for literacy beyond academic understanding about literacy. Premises…

This is a response to "The Ethical Knower: Rethinking Our Pedagogy in the Age of Trump" by Elana Michelson. We appreciate Michelson's critical evaluation of the appropriateness of transformative learning and the use of personal narrative, as well as the frames and tools she offers to help us deal with current challenges such as…

This issue is particularly timely, in its plea to the field to understand that human learning and development have always been on the move--always migrating--even if and when we construct sedentarist bias and territorial boundaries of the nation-state as normative or when we remember or remake as "ambulatory we's" as we engage in…

This commentary extends and amplifies aspects of the Cantor, Osher, Berg, Steyer and Rose (2018) discussion about what we know about the nature of learning and its implications for how we educate students across the span from early childhood through advanced levels of formal education. The paper's overall goal is to offer some guidance and…

Retention research has resulted in a number of theories, models, and frameworks, and the adoption of related strategies by institutions of higher education to graduate the students they admit. These strategies include programming designed to welcome students, give them a sense of belonging, and involve them in the academic and social realms of the…

This paper presents an argument that social theory has valuable roles to play in music education research and philosophy. I first discuss how theory can enhance and strengthen empirical work--and provide insights and connections that abstracted empiricism alone cannot. Then, I argue that social theory--developed, extended, and advanced through…

Over 34 years since its conception, research in educational settings has found evidence for the effectiveness of the 5E Instructional Model. Indeed, several studies have reported evidence of a better conceptual understanding of scientific ideas and models, positive effects on general achievement in science, and positive attitudes toward science.…

In this commentary, we explore tensions between engaging students in authentic disciplinary mathematical activity and insights from critical theorists who analyze equity in mathematics education. The tensions arise as engaging students in authentic mathematical activity usually involve having students adopt the language and norms of another…

Inconsistency in real-world judgments can cause random unfairness, injustice and misallocation of resources. In their recent monograph Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein (2021) analyse judgment inconsistency or "Noise," examine its sources and propose remedies. In this commentary on Kahneman et al., we reflect on the major concepts (such as…

The focal paper by Baird et al. in this special issue argues that there are few issues more important in education than the relationship between assessment and learning. On the one hand, learning is the ultimate goal of all educational interventions; on the other, assessment has become a leviathan that constrains and shapes virtually all of that…

The significance of Noel Entwistle's paper lies in the fundamental question raised regarding the purpose of research into higher education. The article eloquently charts the development of research into student learning and its contribution to the field of educational psychology, but what has been the impact in terms of improvement into the…

In this commentary, Mary James highlights two problems she deemed critical during her work exploring the relationships between assessment and learning in theory and practice. First, efforts to improve assessment for learning were not always successful either in improving performance or in other ways. Second, and this may be a reason for the first…

The contemporary landscape of dread in living and teaching demands a creative and experimental form of investigation that can trace the affective contours of the present and uncover the obscure openings for an oppositional imagination. In a series of interlinked excurses, this essay articulates a poetic probing of the nexus of slow fascism and…

Empowered students have the ability to think and act reflectively as individual subjects of a society or a culture who have formed a conscious self-awareness of the meanings of their multiple affiliations and the significance of their worldly transactions with the other. Teaching should incorporate student ideas and experience actualized from acts…