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Special Issue on Current Challenges and Future Directions for Science Education Research

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Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research (DISER) promotes scholarship and best practices in education within and across science disciplines. DISER publishes original empirical, conceptual and policy studies reflecting the latest development in science education from disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. DISER bridges the divide and facilitates dialogue between formal and informal, disciplinary and interdisciplinary, K-12 and post-secondary, as well as English-speaking and non-English speaking country science education.  

We launched DISER on November 28, 2019 with a set of 14 position papers.  Written by prominent scholars in various fields of science education research, these papers outline current challenges and future directions in various research areas including biology education, chemistry education, geology education and environmental education, physics education, nature of science, socioscientific issues, model and modeling, scientific argumentation, health education, engineering education, project-based learning, and informal science education. Although authors of these papers were invited because of their recognized expertise and international status, all the papers went through rounds of rigorous anonymous peer reviews and revisions. We hope you will find the papers to be not only informative but also insightful!



  1. On 25 September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, which took effect 1 January 2016, to transform the world to better meet human needs and the requirements of economic transformation, while pr...

    Authors: William C. Kyle Jr.
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2020 2:2
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  2. This critical review examines the challenges and opportunities facing the field of Biology Education Research (BER). Ongoing disciplinary fragmentation is identified as a force working in opposition to the dev...

    Authors: Ross H. Nehm
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:15
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  3. This position paper is motivated by recent educational reform efforts that urge the integration of engineering in science education. We argue that it is plausible and beneficial to integrate engineering into f...

    Authors: Senay Purzer and Jenny Patricia Quintana-Cifuentes
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:13
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  4. Research on the understanding of the nature of models and modeling processes in science education have received a lot of attention in science education. In this article, we make five claims about the research ...

    Authors: Mei-Hung Chiu and Jing-Wen Lin
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:12
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  5. The socioscientific issues framework has proven to have a significant impact over the last two decades on many areas related to the development of functional scientific literacy in students. In this article, w...

    Authors: Dana L. Zeidler, Benjamin C. Herman and Troy D. Sadler
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:11
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  6. Profound changes are occurring in society, disrupting current systems and institutions; these disruptions also are affecting science education practice and research. Science learning is becoming a lifelong, se...

    Authors: John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:10
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  7. Science|Environment|Health (S|E|H) is an emerging science pedagogy for complex living systems. The name highlights a situation of mutual benefit between science education, environmental education and health ed...

    Authors: Albert Zeyer and Justin Dillon
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:9
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  8. Argumentation has emerged as a key area of research and development in science education in recent years. Simply defined, argumentation is about the justification of knowledge claims with evidence and reasons....

    Authors: Sibel Erduran, Liam Guilfoyle, Wonyong Park, Jessica Chan and Nigel Fancourt
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:8
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  9. In this paper, we present a design solution that involves the bringing together of Project-based Learning (PBL) with the theory of usable knowledge (Pellegrino & Hilton, Developing transferable knowledge and s...

    Authors: Emily C. Miller and Joseph S. Krajcik
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:7
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  10. This review traces the history of research on the teaching and learning of nature of scientific knowledge (NOSK), and its implications for curriculum and instruction. Initially, the complex rubric of NOSK is c...

    Authors: Norman G. Lederman and Judith S. Lederman
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:6
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  11. This article offers a viewpoint regarding the current status of chemistry education research (CER) as a scholarly field within science education, and suggests priorities for future directions of work in the fi...

    Authors: Keith S. Taber
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:5
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  13. This article addresses the question of what the future directions and emphases of the research in the earth science education field ought to be. During the past 30 years, Earth science education research has e...

    Authors: Nir Orion
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:3
    Content type: Position paper Published on:

  14. Education goals have evolved to emphasize student acquisition of the knowledge and attributes necessary to successfully contribute to the workforce and global economy of the twenty-first Century. The new educa...

    Authors: Lei Bao and Kathleen Koenig
    Citation: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 2019 1:2
    Content type: Position paper Published on: