The articles in a special issue of this journal, Merits and Limitations of Researching Teaching Quality More Synergistically, grapple with the assertion that the field does not share a common language or structural decomposition of teaching and that the current range of frameworks and observation systems used by researchers jeopardizes the accumulation of knowledge in the field. We analyze these arguments from a socio-cultural perspective, theorizing that teaching and the improvement of teaching occur in socially situated contexts that give meaning to all research frameworks and measurement tools. Rather than asking whether a common framework of teaching might be useful, we ask when such a framework might be useful, when can such efforts be limiting, and why? Building on contemporary validity theory, we bring the role of context back into the current conversation. We suggest that while there are important affordances of a unified framework of teaching quality, such a framework will be unable to fully address some of the issues identified in this special issue. For practical, theoretical, empirical, and socio-cultural reasons, researchers will require multiple frameworks and associated observation systems to support the study and improvement of teaching across contexts.

该期刊特刊中的文章《更协同地研究教学质量的优点和局限性》，努力解决以下问题：该领域没有共同语言或教学结构分解，并且研究人员当前使用的框架和观察系统范围危及该领域知识的积累。我们从社会文化的角度分析这些论点，理论认为教学和教学改进发生在社会情境中，这赋予所有研究框架和测量工具以意义。我们不是问一个共同的教学框架是否有用，而是问这样的框架何时可能有用，何时这种努力会受到限制，以及为什么？基于当代有效性理论，我们将情境的作用带回到当前的对话中。我们建议，虽然统一的教学质量框架具有重要意义，这样一个框架将无法充分解决本期特刊中指出的一些问题。出于实践、理论、经验和社会文化的原因，研究人员将需要多个框架和相关的观察系统来支持跨环境的研究和教学改进。