The Journal of Science Teacher Education on the European Stage

The European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) held its 12th Conference this month in Dublin, Ireland. The conference is quite similar to the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching in terms of its scope and focus on research on the teaching and learning of science. ESERA holds a conference every other year, and although it draws international participation, most attendees are from the European continent. Unlike previous conferences, this year ESERA invited symposia from what they consider the most prominent journals in science education. The Journal of Science Teacher Education (JSTE) is proud to have been invited to organize a symposium highlighting our organization’s flagship journal. More than 50% of our associate editors were present, as was Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) President Gillian Roehrig. It was a great opportunity to promote the virtues of ASTE and JSTE.

The symposium was organized around four articles that were previously published in JSTE (Dajani, 2017; Kahn & Zeidler, 2016; Olin & Ingerman, 2016; Richmond, Parker, & Kaldaras, 2016). These particular articles were chosen because they represented the empirical, theoretical, and international foci of JSTE articles. The specific articles are listed in the references section at the end of this editorial. The discussant for the symposium was Knut Neumann from IPN in Kiel, Germany, and one of our associate editors. He posed a series of insightful and stimulating questions to the authors of each of the articles. We strongly suggest that you read each of the articles (if you haven’t already done so) and consider these questions as you read.

The first paper in the symposium (Dajani, 2017) focused on educative curricula and was previously published as part of a JSTE special issue edited by Joseph Krajcik. The question raised was “Isn’t all curriculum educative in one way or another?” Indeed, some may consider teachers’ materials that accompany student materials as being educative. If this is the case, could or should a model be developed for refining educative curricula to be most effective? Alternatively, are educative curricula so idiosyncratic that attempting to develop a best practices model would be counterproductive? There was not enough time to discuss these issues during the symposium, but we think they deserve some serious consideration.

The second paper came from colleagues in Sweden (Olin & Ingerman, 2016), and the focus was on professional development collaborations between teams of researchers and teams of science teachers. Establishing such collaborative teams is becoming more popular, especially outside of North America. Establishing productive collaborative partnerships is no trivial task. We all probably have stories of successes and failures. The point raised to the presenters was whether research in this area is at a point where dos and don’ts for teachers and researchers working in such teams can be offered. If not, what is needed to reach this point? And, of course, is the wisdom of practice in working in such teams capable of offering any advice on how to sustain relationships that appear successful?

The third paper, presented by Richmond et al. (2016), was concerned with supporting reform-based secondary science teaching. In particular, this support was in the form of developing and using a framework for analyzing the construction of scientific explanations. Students’ construction of scientific explanations is certainly a key vision promoted by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; NGSS Lead States, 2013), and it also presents a challenge to science teacher educators. Knut Neumann asked whether the framework is a progression of sorts. He also asked, “How do we support teacher candidates’ progression with their ability to analyze students’ constructions of explanations?” In short, he posed the idea that there are two progressions to consider: one for students’ developing abilities and one for teachers’ developing ability to teach the construction of explanations to students. Certainly there is much more work to be done in this area along with the many other visions of the NGSS.

The final paper of the symposium (Kahn & Zeidler, 2016) was a theoretical paper that focused on developing students’ perspective taking when considering socioscientific issues. The critical question asked of the presenters was how the perspective-taking strategies relate to the assessments used. Finally, given his personal interest in learning progressions, Knut Neumann posed the question of whether an overarching model could be developed for perspective taking (i.e., a learning progression).

Certainly this short editorial cannot do justice to the high quality of the papers presented in the symposium and published in JSTE. But this short discussion does point out the diversity and thoughtfulness of the articles published in our association’s journal. If you haven’t already done so, please take the time to delve into these articles yourself.

The point here is not to use this editorial to advertise JSTE. Then again, maybe it is. ASTE is an international organization and arguably the most prominent professional organization with a focus on science teacher education. And although we have a much narrower focus than other research journals in science education, the articles within the pages of our journal are of the highest quality and contribute significantly to the literature on both in-service and preservice science teacher education. This is not a trivial comment. All of the other science education journals publish articles on science teacher education as well as research with other foci. JSTE only publishes articles on science teacher education. It has been a continuing goal of ASTE and JSTE to increase the international prominence of the organization and our flagship journal. The symposium and the ESERA audience’s reaction to the presentations clearly indicate that we are all accomplishing our shared goal. Please continue to submit manuscripts to JSTE, and be assured that the readership is becoming increasingly international. In addition, please encourage your international colleagues to join ASTE and consider JSTE as an outlet for their empirical research or theoretical manuscripts.