In the past twenty-five years, the number of science education researchers of African descent has grown substantially. With that growth, there has also been an increase in research examining science teaching and learning as it pertains to populations of African descent. The articles presented in this special issue offer a peak into this growing…

For those interested in understanding cultures of learning in both formal and informal science educational contexts, ethnography is often the research approach of choice. Yet ethnography, as a research approach, is far from monolithic. The myriad of nuances, distinctions, and open questions of ethnographic research, employed as full-scale…

In this paper we introduce the concept of contextual mitigating factors (CMFs) as an analytical tool for interrogating the contextual landscapes that situate one's research. While we understand that much work has been done on the importance of identifying context in research programs, we continue to stress the importance of developing contextually…

Alterity is a concept with an extensive yet elusive history. Popularly conceived of as radical difference and Otherness, I identify alterity as the source of much of the virulent forms of racism, sexism, islamophobia, and other dichotomies in society that pit one group against another. Coming out of the tradition of critical qualitative inquiry, I…

Inspired by Freire's principle of dialogue, in this article we present a series of dialogues and critical syntheses between a science teacher-researcher with 35 years of experience and an early-career science teacher-researcher. We explore being in-between academic research in science education and high school teaching. Following Anzaldúa's…

In this article, I detail my involvement in sociopolitical conversations as a science education researcher. I present two of the controversies in which I have been involved in recent years: Metal dust from the Port of Québec (Quebec, Canada) and the Maillé case (the case of a researcher who has to hand over to a private company her research data…

This article explores Vanessa Anthony-Stevens and Sammy Matsaw's paper "The Productive Uncertainty of Indigenous and Decolonizing Methodologies in the Preparation of Interdisciplinary STEM Researchers". That paper reports on a small qualitative study on how STEM students in the field of natural resources management react to the inclusion…

In the Fall of 2017, I was introduced to V-Note, a software tool for analyzing audio and video in the classroom. I quickly adapted to using V-Note in research as it is easy to navigate, widely accessible, and most necessary features are included for free. Through this paper, I explore some possible applications of V-Note in education research. I…

This paper is written in response to Alberto J. Rodriguez and Deb Morrison's article entitled, "Expanding and Enacting Transformative Meanings of Equity, Diversity and Social Justice in Science Education." The authors provide a historical account of science education social justice research efforts within the USA and support the need to…

As newcomers in the field of science education research we discuss our perspectives on critical scholarship in the academy. Using the metalogue approach we explore our perceptions of science education, our experiences of the barriers to critical science education research, our analyses of why these barriers exist, and imaginings about how these…

This essay responds to a selection of ideas and theoretical frameworks Sharada Gade uses to conduct her study. The ideas raised by Sharada are placed in the context of the changes and experiences taking place in today's public school system. Her ideas also provide new insights into the construct of relational agency in accordance with expansive…

It has been more than 3 years since Christine left us. She has left a lasting legacy of her academic brilliance among the science education community. This paper pays tribute to Christine's fine research work that has shaped and continues to shape science education research in the field of questioning and argumentation.

Sharada Gade, in drawing on her long association with a mathematics teacher in Sweden, theorises the complexities of the teacher-researcher collaboration as an expansive learning activity that has developed over time. In this paper, an alternate reading of the teacher-researcher collaboration is offered, one that adds to the analysis provided by…

Common sense and published literature both assert that education research is often dismissed by practitioners on the grounds that it is irrelevant to their work. Some have argued that this is due primarily to a mismatch of professional epistemologies. While agreeing in principle, this work draws on work in sociology (Erving Goffman) and literary…

In the first three sections of this paper we comment on some of the ideas developed in the forum papers, pointing out possible misunderstandings and constructing new explanations that clarify arguments we made in the original article. In the last section we expand the discussion raised in the original paper, elaborating on the limits of the use of…