This article addresses key challenges posed by critical realism, proposed by Longhofer and Floersch, as a philosophical underpinning for a science of social work. As a response to Longhofer and Floersch, it is argued that critical realism may be instructive in debates about structural conditions that dictate more inclusive interventions and…

Kristin L. Sayeski introduces the reader to Dan Hallahan and provides a synopsis of his educational background. She reports Hallahan received his BA in psychology in 1967 and his PhD in education and psychology in 1971 from the University of Michigan, then began his career as an assistant professor in special education at the University of…

Informal science education is a broad field of research marked by fuzzy boundaries, tensions, and muddles among many disciplines, making for an unclear future trajectory (or trajectories) for the field of study. In this commentary, I unpack some of the hidden dimensions, tensions and challenges the five articles raise or point to implicitly in…

The current spurt in life science activity in China has been driven by repatriating researchers trained in the prestigious institutions of the world. China's publications show a clear concentration in the physical sciences and technology, with materials science, chemistry, and physics predominant. Also clear is that the growth areas include…

This article critique reflects on "Standards for a New Century: Educating U.S. Students to Compete in the Global Economy," which was published in 2009 in the "Carnegie Reporter", a publication of The Carnegie Corporation of New York. The article, written by Carnegie staff writer Karen Theroux, explained the need for Common Core…

This essay argues that there is a need for higher education researchers to become aware of methodological nationalism (MN) and take steps to reframe their scholarship in new ways. It illuminates two characteristics of MN prevalent in higher education research and suggests that although a few researchers have attempted to move beyond MN in the…

In his article, Paul E. Newton has conducted a review of selected perspectives on validity theory with the goal of disambiguating the definition of validity and describing a consensus definition of validity. Newton provides a nuanced discussion of the evolution of the concept of validity over the years. His Focus article has two major goals: (1)…

For more than 30 years, Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith has developed and directed research and contributed to publications about education and "practitioner research," especially about teachers' research and learning in inquiry communities. Her primary topics are inquiry communities, teacher research, teacher education for social…

University researchers face a significant obstacle when studying schools: their lives as researchers began in schools. How can researchers enter the contemporary high school and see the movement of bodies through those halls as something other than a confirmation or rejection of their own schooling experiences? What special intellectual and…

This paper represents the views of two scholars in the USA with respect to the scholar lecture presented by David Kirk at the 2012 BERA -- Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) Special Interest Group meeting. We discuss how two unique features of the American universities have an impact on both the corporate nature of our work and our…

The article engages with the opportunities and constraints raised by embedded research during times of rapid and extensive organisational change. Embedded research is an increasingly common approach for funding PhD studentships. The rapid and extensive reforms of the English public sector pose significant and underexplored challenges for embedded…

This commentary on the special issue on data use highlights the distinctions between data systems intended to improve the performance of school staff and those intended to hold schools and districts accountable for outcomes. It advises researchers to be alert to the differences in the policy logics connected with each approach.

In their target paper, "Towards a systemic theory of gifted education," A. Ziegler and S. N. Phillipson present a long awaited call for a paradigmatic shift in thinking within the field of gifted education. The paper considers how educators and researchers within the field could bring about such a change. They challenge the prevailing…

This article seeks to explore a politics of becoming. Emphasizing the dynamics of both time and the affects produced with it, we engage by following the questions that are taken up, which bubble through the middle and which niggle at the margins of our thoughts. In sensing out the imperatives that seek to tie emotions to subjects, we argue that…

This response to Vassiliki Papatsiba's article on collaboration draws attention to structural barriers to collaborative research: for example, increased competition for scarce resources, increased steering of research, and the casualisation of research workers. It draws on experience of collaborative work in a large, EU-funded project to…