Outgoing Editor's Statement: A Perspective on EP and Debates in Education

In this first issue of Educational Psychologist (EP) edited by Kathryn Wentzel, I am very grateful for this opportunity to share some reflections on my past term as Editor. This is an occasion to reflect on the journal during my term, to discuss what I see as some trends in our field, and to give thanks to the many colleagues who have supported the journal.

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST DURING THE PAST 5 YEARS

I begin with a few remarks about EP during the past 5 years. In the proposal I submitted in 2008 to be considered for Editor of EP, my vision for the journal included five goals, all which I perceived as extensions of goals that had already been pursued by my predecessors:

• Focusing on theory needed to explain processes of learning, teaching, and motivation in formal and informal educational settings

• Promoting educational psychology as a theoretically and methodologically diverse discipline

• Addressing methodology for research in complex learning environments

• Building bridges between educational psychology and allied disciplines

• Encouraging greater participation by international scholars

Broadly, I believe that these goals have been achieved during my term; at the least, I have diligently worked to try to achieve them. The manuscripts published in EP during these past 5 years represent a broad range of topics, theoretical approaches, and associated methodologies. The published articles have continued EP's long history of advancing theory that explains processes of learning, teaching, and motivation in applied settings. Many authors have advanced theory that explains processes of learning and motivation in classroom settings; others have examined nonclassroom settings such as museums and zoos, college admissions, and social media (e.g., wikis). The theoretical and methodological diversity of our field has been evident in papers that advance long-standing theories in the field, such as work on achievement goal theory in motivation, as well as in papers that advance somewhat newer approaches, such as situative theories and methodologies.

As Editor, I sought to strengthen linkages between EP and the learning sciences, as well as between EP and other allied fields. EP's authors have represented diversified areas of expertise, reflecting the many areas in which educational psychology interfaces with other fields, and I believe that EP has profited greatly from the work of these outstanding scholars. These linkages also have been reflected in EP's Editorial Board. At the same time, I have striven to uphold the established arenas of EP's excellence; EP authors during the past 5 years have continued EP's outstanding traditions of advancing theory in areas including motivation, transfer, learning theory, literacy, and learning in the disciplines.

EP has become an increasingly international journal, with a significant increase in international Board members over the past 15 years. During the same time, EP has seen a steady, substantial increase in the number of articles authored and coauthored by scholars outside North America, an increase that has continued unabated during the past 5 years.

I believe that these moves have been healthy for EP. EP remains one of the top journals in education in its impact. Among all educational journals, EP has been second during the past 2 years according to the widely used 2-year impact factor rankings, behind only Review of Educational Research. The success of the journal has arisen from the work of numerous scholars within the field and within the American Psychological Association's Division 15, and I express my appreciation for their contributions in the final part of this statement.

REFLECTIONS ON THE FIELD

Next I would like to share some of my reflections on the directions of our field. What trends in the field have I noticed as Editor, considering the full range of submissions to the journal? As one trend, I could point to steadily greater attention to social dimensions of learning and motivation, ongoing interest in the contextual and situated aspects of learning and motivation, efforts to better explain the complex dynamics of classroom learning, interest in the interfaces between learning and assessment, work advancing our understanding of discourse in education, and attention to critical theoretical approaches to educational psychology. Submissions to the journal have sought to deepen and improve explanations in all these areas.

But overall, most striking to me is the ongoing diversification of theories and methodologies, without clear resolution. While work on situative and participationist theories continues apace, work in more traditional lines of psychological analysis such as achievement goal theory and self-regulated learning has also continued to blossom. While work on social theories (e.g., work on coregulation and shared regulation of learning) has flourished, deeper analyses of individual cognition have also been advanced. While some researchers have advanced and investigated methods for learning through inquiry and problem solving, others have advocated methods of direct instruction. Fundamental differences among theorists have emerged both in their commitments to the core constructs of their theories and in their methodologies. In fields that are already marked by a proliferation of terms and definitions, our analyses have been further complicated by even more new approaches to analyzing motivation, epistemic cognition, coregulation of learning, and other constructs. Methodological differences persist, without consensus, on the relative value of experimentation, randomized clinical trials, case studies, ethnographies, and other methods in developing our understanding of learning, teaching, and motivation.

In a climate of enduring disagreements, one natural response is to strive for ways to settle the disagreements as quickly as possible—to resolve them through integrative analyses or by finding ways to reach swifter consensus on one approach or another. It can seem appealing to try to settle issues quickly—perhaps through means such as seeking a consensus of leading experts on how core terms are to be used. My inclination as Editor (supported by the inclination of many of our Board members and reviewers) has been to take the opposite approach—and instead to deliberately encourage diversity in theoretical and epistemic positions.

My understanding of productive social processes of science has been influenced by the work of the philosopher of science Miriam Solomon, particularly in her book Social Empiricism (Solomon, 2001). Solomon argued through a series of historical scientific cases that progress in science has often been disrupted and delayed because of efforts to resolve disputes too quickly, to reach consensus before the various empirical and nonempirical grounds for resolving the dispute are decisive enough to clearly support one side or another or any particular integrative theory. For example, when medical researchers neglected early findings that viruses caused some forms of cancer, this neglect not only slowed recognition of other cancers caused by viruses but also led to neglect of research on an important mechanism by which nonviral cancers develop—a mechanism readily illuminated by study of viral cancers. Solomon's historical analyses support the position that progress is often disrupted because ideas that we now realize to have been highly productive were prematurely rejected.

Therefore, I would argue that what the field needs is not to decide on one or another of these perspectives quickly or to settle too easily on an integrated theories but rather to promote rigorous, ambitious development of different perspectives so that their strengths and weaknesses can be extensively probed and the phenomena that they can best explain be developed. This approach mandates that proponents of the different perspectives work rigorously to deepen their theories and extend their empirical reach so as to make the best possible case for their perspectives. It is not sufficient for rival theories to make general criticisms and provide broad-brushstroke manifestos; the field will be best served if all theorists strive to provide detailed accounts of an expanding range of phenomena, each according to their own epistemic approaches.

Different theoretical approaches often take different epistemic stances about proper methods for conducting inquiry and standards for evaluating theories and other products. In my view, these differences should not necessarily lead the field to conclude that rival methods and standards are incommensurate (Kuhn, 1962) so that each paradigm must be left to its own. Rather, I would argue—following arguments of philosophers such as Goldman (2010) and Laudan (1990)—that it is possible to reason about the relative merits of different methods and standards, and this debate should be encouraged; further, the history of science shows that empirical research can sometimes enlighten researchers about the strengths and weaknesses of methods (e.g., empirical medical research showing the need for double-blind clinical trials). The pages of EP are a natural home for such philosophical and empirical discussions about methods and standards.

None of these arguments are meant to discourage attempts to develop integrative positions or analyses of commonalities and differences across perspectives. For example, there is certainly an important role for theorists to analyze similarities and differences across terminologies, and even to propose new common terminologies. But, on my analysis, the field should not be in a rush to close in on a single accepted position. Science develops well-grounded consensus over the longer haul, not by fiat in the short run (Solomon, 2015).

Some disagreements among theories may prove to be a matter of different but not incompatible perspectives. In Scientific Perspectivism, the philosopher Ronald Giere (2006) argued that different methods of scientific observation yield results that are inextricably tied to the method of observation. For example, in neuroscience, CAT scans provide a perspective on the structure of the brain that is shaped by “the nature of X-rays and their interaction with various kinds of tissue, the design and operation of the detectors, and the elaborate computer program that converts relative linear intensity data into two-dimensional black-and-white images” (p. 56). In contrast, MRI images are produced using methods that can be understood only in terms of quantum mechanics, and final images are strongly influenced by decisions involving trade-offs between speed of measurement versus sensitivity of detecting differences in tissue composition (p. 56). “In sum, scientific observation does not simply produce images of the brain. One has images as produced by CAT or MRI or so forth. One cannot detach the description of the image from the perspective from which it was produced” (p. 56). Giere provided other illuminating examples of such perspectival differences from different fields of science.

According to Giere, claims about what is observed emerge from an interaction of measurement systems and the thing being measured. Seemingly contradictory accounts of phenomena may sometimes arise from such perspectival differences, with each account accurately capturing the phenomena according to its own observation/measurement system. However, on Giere's analysis it is also possible for differing accounts to be genuinely inconsistent, not just different in this perspectival sense, and in such cases there is a need to try to resolve the inconsistency. If two neuroscientists using different methods locate the exact same form of higher order thinking in opposite parts of the brain, they have a genuine inconsistency not attributable only to perspectival differences.

Some disagreements in education may be perspectival in character. Students learning in a classroom may be viewed through different observational/measurement systems (e.g., a situative theory of motivation using ethnographic methods of observation vs. an achievement-goal theory of motivation employing self-report measures). Each perspective may accurately render the system as seen through its theoretical and measurement lens, and on its own levels of analysis. (It appears to me that Sfard, 1998, and Greeno, 2015, offered similar analyses of some rival educational theories.) If this analysis is correct, another task for educational research is to uncover which differences among our theories are perspectival in Giere's sense and which are genuine inconsistencies.

In debates where the differences between theories prove to be largely perspectival, it may still be the case that one theory is more practically useful than the other. For instance, if theorists were to agree that the differences between situative and achievement-goal theories of motivation were perspectival, it might still be the case that one approach or the other could be more fruitful for guiding the design of learning environments (cf. Nolen, Horn, & Ward, 2015), perhaps in ways that both groups of theorists might eventually agree foster a healthier motivational climate in the classroom. Differences in such practical uses of different theories should also be the target of extensive empirical research and argumentation.

In summary, my stance on the many debates in our field has been: Let those debating perspectives develop vigorously, and let them engage with each other in vigorous discussion, at every level of engagement—including the empirical, the ontic, and the epistemic. The field is well served neither by premature closure nor by isolated development. EP has hosted many of these debates throughout its history; indeed, this is one of EP's vital roles.

THE MANY WHO CONTRIBUTE TO EP

Finally, I turn to acknowledging and expressing my gratitude to the many scholars who support EP and to whom I owe enormous thanks. I would like to begin by thanking Division 15 of the American Psychological Association for entrusting me with the stewardship of the journal and for their support of the goals that I laid out in my proposal. It has been wonderful to work with the leadership and membership of the Division. Each of the Presidents of the Division during my editorship has provided the journal and me as Editor with strong support, as has the Division's Publications Committee. The Division's Director of Communications, Wade George, has been ever ready to provide marketing expertise.

I thank the Editorial Board for their outstanding service. The Board members' careful, thoughtful reviews have provided detailed guidance for the authors, as well as for me as Editor. The Board includes eminent scholars who have their own editorial and leadership responsibilities, yet they have contributed unstintingly to EP.

EP depends not only on its Board but also on the many ad hoc reviewers who generously donate their time and expertise to provide careful reviews of manuscripts. The journal could not have managed the extremely wide variety of submitted manuscripts without the expert contributions of these many colleagues, who come from a variety of fields and specializations within psychology, education, and philosophy.

I have been gifted with two outstanding Editorial Assistants through my term. In the first half of my term, the journal's Editorial Assistant was William Pluta. In addition to handling the daily work to perfection, William shepherded EP through our transition from Editorial Manager to ScholarOne. In the second half of my term, Ronald Rinehart has served the journal with equal skill and aplomb, keeping everything on track and facilitating the transition to the new editorial team.

I could never have gotten off the mark as Editor without the able mentorship of my predecessor, Gale Sinatra. Gale thoroughly prepared me to take on this work and was an ongoing source of advice and assistance. And at the end of my term, it has been a very great pleasure to work with my successor, Kathryn Wentzel, during the transition to her editorship.

The authors of both published and unpublished manuscripts deserve tremendous thanks from our community. The quality of work in EP depends on the great creativity and talent of its authors. I have been most impressed with the willingness of authors to engage in extensive revisions; authors repeatedly met the challenges of pushing their theoretical analyses further and incorporating more extensive evidence. In addition, I deeply appreciate (and will always cherish) the graciousness with which many authors responded to unfavorable decisions, sincerely thanking the reviewers and me for our input to their own thinking.

The team at Taylor & Francis has been stalwart in their constant, professional support. Cathy Ott has been the Production Editor throughout my term; she has meticulously prepared each of our issues and has frequently gone far beyond her ordinary duties to ensure the success of EP.

Working with the Guest Editors of the seven special issues during my term has been an exciting intellectual enterprise. I have learned a great deal through thoroughgoing discussions with the guest editors as well as from the authors of the special issues. I heartily thank all of the Guest Editors for their intense work to produce the best possible special issues: College and University Admissions (Robert Sternberg, Liane Gabora, and Christine Bonney), New Conceptualizations of Transfer of Learning (Robert Goldstone and Samuel Day), Theoretical Underpinnings of Successful Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (Paul Kirschner and Gijsbert Erkens), Understanding the Public Understanding of Science: Psychological Approaches (Rainer Bromme and Susan Goldman), Engagement in the Context of Science Learning (Gale Sinatra and Doug Lombardi), The Relevance of the Situative Perspective in Educational Psychology (Julianne Turner and Susan Bobbitt Nolen), and Psychological Perspectives on Digital Games and Learning (Michael McCreery, Sharon Tettegah, and Fran Blumberg).

Through my work as Editor, more than ever I have come to grasp that scholarship is a fundamentally social process. The stature of EP has emerged from the nexus of an exceptional community of authors, board members, reviewers, editors, guest editors, and Division leaders and members, all of whom have worked collectively to support new theoretical advances in our field. I am honored and grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of this community, and I look forward to continue to work with the community in new roles. Looking ahead, I am excited to follow EP's bright future under the superb leadership of Kathryn Wentzel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Sarit Barzilai, Ravit Golan Duncan, and Toshio Mochizuki for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.