Introduction

The last few years have seen unprecedented disruptions in education. We began work on this Special Issue as we emerged from the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as we neared publication, challenges associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as ChatGTP were dominating the media headlines. It seemed natural to consider to what degree we were equipped to provide answers to these (and other) increasingly complex and new problems, and we, as Early Career Researchers (ECRs), recognised that many of these problems will be ours to solve. This special issue entitled ‘Early Career Innovations in Science Education Research’ thus presents contributions to the field exclusively from ECR authors who are within the first five years of completing their doctoral studies. The contributions to this Special Issue are varied: from the early years of schooling (e.g., Marshall, 2023) to the university setting (e.g., Costello et al., 2023), using existing methodologies (e.g., Dankenbring et al., 2023) to new ones (e.g., Chappell, 2023; Park et al., 2023), and focused on traditional research topics (e.g., Ong et al., 2023) to those more diverse (e.g., Brady, 2023; Marangio et al., 2023). What they have in common, however, is an innovative contribution to science education research, providing us with an opportunity to think about what the future of the field might look like.

The term ‘innovation’ conjures up associations of ‘newness’ or ‘originality’, although its precise meaning and what it looks like in different fields remains difficult to capture (Adams et al., 2006; Georgiou et al., 2022; Kaufman & Glăveanu, 2019). Often associated with economic or organisational activities, innovation, together with ‘creativity’ and ‘entrepreneurship’, have received increasing attention in the literature, lauded as an ‘essential’ skill or quality of graduates and our future workforce (Taylor et al., 2022; Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019). Most research on innovation is centred on how to ‘diffuse’ innovation across organisations and businesses, with much less attention paid to the substance and facilitation of innovation in academic research, which is considered poorly theorised (Schmitz et al., 2017).

For this Special Issue, we consider innovation in the specific context of science education research. Innovation in research is vital in our current ‘knowledge society’ and higher education institutions face increasing pressure to articulate their innovative practices. Consistent with literature on creativity and innovation (Kaufman & Glăveanu, 2019; Quintane et al., 2011), we propose that being innovative means to take an approach that is considered new, divergent, or creative within a context (or by actors in a field) that may offer insights or advance the field, with the goal of bringing about social change. ‘New’ innovations might include new frontiers or topics or contemporaneous responses to current issues. If the innovation is ‘divergent’, we take this to mean viewing a research problem through a different lens via an alternative, or broader approach. This might include a different interpretation of a familiar issue, or an uncommon application of a familiar methodology. A ‘creative’ innovation might involve adopting a completely new methodology or approach, or borrowing one from another discipline. Of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive. Innovative approaches might include devising new theories, undertaking new methodologies, administering new experiments, adopting new technologies, applying existing methods in new ways, or exploring new topics, amongst other possibilities. The conceptualisation was intended to help guide potential ECR authors when considering how their research was ‘innovative’.

ECRs are naturally considered ‘the future’ of the field. We know from research that ECRs are a distinct group with distinct characteristics (Christian et al., 2021; Smith, 2020). ECRs in science, for example, are reported to be the largest group of researchers in the field (Jones, 2014), and there are claims that they are also the most creative and energetic (Friesenhahn & Beaudry, 2014). Christian et al. (2021) in their survey of over 600 STEM ECRs in Australia, characterise ECRs as passionate researchers who are motivated by altruism and intellectual curiosity. To make the transition from ECR to successful researcher, ECRs report achieving publication in high impact, field-topping journals as a key challenge (Nicholas et al., 2017). Initiatives, including this Special Issue, may thus act to support ECRs in their endeavours to be heard in high impact settings. Both authors and Special Issue Guest Editors involved in this edition were ECRs at the time of the genesis of the Special Issue.

In transforming this Special Issue from a collection of papers into a coherent contribution to the field, we have also reflected on ‘innovation’ more broadly. We explored innovation in the field of science education research over time by examining five historical articles from RISE that have reviewed the evolution of research in science education (see Table 1). We also surveyed experienced researchers – the Editorial Board (EB) of Research in Science Education (RISE) – to unpack their thoughts on innovation in science education research, along with their visions for the future. In the sections that follow, we synthesise this data to contribute to an overall ‘science education research trajectory’, spanning the past (‘A look at what has come before’) and future (‘A look at what lies ahead’). We also take ‘A look at the present’, where we summarise the contributions to this Special Issue. To conclude the paper, we reflected on the theme ‘innovation’ and the process of creating this Special Issue for both ourselves as Guest Editors and the ECR contributors.

A Look at What Has Come Before

In this section we map the historical research landscape by conducting an archaeological analysis of five salient journal articles or editorials/commentaries published in RISE whose purpose was to scope the trajectory of science education research (Table 1). Where possible, one article was selected from RISE for each decade since the journal arose from the Australasian Science Education Research Association (ASERA) conference proceedings in the 1970s (NB: the first ASERA meeting was May 1970).

Table 1 The archive of articles used to map the historical research landscape
Full size table

In 1979, Vale Emeritus Professor Peter Fensham (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) reflected on two growth areas in science education – concept development and contextual influences on science education. Fensham noted the prevalence of (Neo-) Piagetian ideas and clinical interviewing methodology for learning about children’s cognition and its implications for curriculum and teaching. He highlighted research that found similarity between children’s cognition and the historical evolution of scientific concepts and theories. In relation to the idea of ‘context’, Fensham categorically stated “science education is not a thing completely in its own right but is … part of … schooling and the demands of the wider society” (p. 2). He outlined research taking place across the globe that “looks outwards rather than inwards” (p. 2) to understand science curriculum and learning as culturally and politically situated. Fensham also reflected on the need for new research designs, frankly telling readers he found “little to excite me in the groups pursuing more traditional research approaches” (p. 2).

In 1983, Emeritus Professor Richard White (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) wrote a review about ‘the past ten years and the next five’ of science education research (an unfathomable task in the present day!). Drawing on what he wrote for the Science chapter of the Third Handbook of Research on Teaching, White noted a rapidly increasing volume of science education research, especially outside the USA, and a shift towards “concern for details, mechanisms, and effects” (White, 1983, p. 1) demonstrated by complex learning theories/models. He informed readers that Piaget was still popular (although he suggested the field of cognitive structure research will “wither away” (p. 4)), as were theories from cognitive psychology dealing with topics such as information processing and memory. He pointed out the uptake of constructivist theories – for example, Wittrock’s, 1974) generative model of learning and Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory – and declared his excitement for Bell’s work in the Learning in Science Project (Primary) (see, for example, Bell, 2005). In addition to a continued emphasis on external or contextual influences on science learning, individual factors such as abilities and attitudes were incorporated into models of learning – what White (1983) described as “[putting] the learner in the picture” (p. 2). For White (1983), by the mid-1980s, research had become so diverse and involved that “each of us will have a preferred version [of learning]” (p. 2), although he anticipated advances in constructivist theories. Finally, White reminded us that “theories, models, questions, and methods interact … advances in one promote advances in the others” (p. 7). As such, experimental research had been supplemented by case studies with observations and interviews, and self-report data.

Writing again more than a decade later in 1997, White described a “time of revolution in [science education] research” (White, 1997, p. 220). To manage an ever-growing corpus of research, White used counts of keywords from summaries of articles in the ERIC database to provide a brief account of how research topics had changed over time. There was indeed a marked increase in the number of articles focused on ‘constructivist or constructivism’ (nearly quadrupling from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s), as well as ‘conceptions and misconceptions’ and ‘classroom(s)’. Sampling five top-tiered science education journals across three defined years, including RISE, White also examined changes in research style. The most notable finding was the replacement of experiments and curriculum evaluations with descriptions – what he described as a shift from a psychological model to a historical or journalistic one – that favoured the use of observations and interviews. As well, White (1997) looked into who was being researched and who was producing the research – questions that are omnipresent today. He found secondary school students remained the most common research participants, and significant absences included kindergarten children and members of the general public. Referring to authorship, White (1997) found more geographically diverse authors (evidenced by an increasing number of author affiliations on articles), and more female authors.

In 2008, Emeritus Professor Steven Ritchie (Murdoch University, Perth, Australia) was appointed Editor in Chief of RISE, commencing with an editorial entitled The Next Phase in Scholarship and Innovative Research in Science Education (Ritchie, 2008). Although a brief document of only two pages, Ritchie outlined innovative developments featured in RISE volumes such as teacher autobiographical research. He called for other new lines of inquiry to be canvassed, and for a movement away from traditional methodologies. Ritchie emphasised the need for future research to be with and for (rather than on) participants.

To celebrate ASERA’s 50th anniversary, Emeritus Professor Keith Skamp (Southern Cross University, Australia) reviewed the last 25 years (1994–2019) of research published in the association’s journal RISE. Skamp described his aim as providing a “status report” (Skamp, 2022, p. 207) of research in RISE, including how it had changed over time in terms of research areas and approaches/designs. RISE papers were analysed at four-year intervals across seven volumes for pragmatic reasons, representing 262/970 (27%) papers. Skamp generated trends from this data that he described as more “evolutionary than revolutionary” (p. 230); meaning the research landscape has now expanded and is more varied, rather than completely transformed.

Skamp (2022) informed readers that the dominant research programs were modelling and representations, conceptual change, and science inquiry: fields that remain related to constructivism. Newer fields included Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Nature of Science (NOS), and Socio-Scientific Issues (SSIs). The most researched population remained secondary school students: however, newer participant groups included early childhood children, pre-service teachers, and informal educators such as those working at centres of science and technology. Skamp also noted that the bulk of the research corpus comprised empirical papers located in an interpretivist paradigm. Most papers were qualitative, with more than half employing case study or grounded theory research designs. However, there appeared to be a “resurgence” (Skamp, 2022, p. 214) of quantitative papers in the last decade, and a slow rise in mixed-methods. Accompanying this was an increase in small-scale research (and a decrease in moderate- and large-scale research). Qualitative data generation still favoured interviews and observations, but expanded to include documents, artefacts, and field notes. Skamp detailed areas warranting more attention, including STEM and technology education, geology education, and early childhood education. He noted a dearth of critical studies focused on inequality and power dynamics.

Overall, these review papers represent the field as one that has become larger, in terms of pure output, more varied, in terms of researching beyond the individual and utilising a wider range of methodological and theoretical approaches. There are also more specific ways in which the field has developed, including a focus on particular ideas or topics, such as Socio-scientific issues.

A Look at What Lies Ahead

In addition to our analysis of the five journal articles described above, we also designed and administered a survey that was sent to RISE Editorial Board (EB) members. Our aim was to gather the EB members’ perspectives on what innovation in the field might look like in the near future. In this section, we briefly outline the approach and results of this survey.

An online Qualtrics survey was distributed to RISE EB members in November 2022. The survey was developed by the three Special Issue Guest Editors and distributed by the Editors-in-Chief of RISE. The study received approval from the Social Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Wollongong (Reference: 2022/362). We used tenets of thematic analysis to make sense of participants’ responses (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Thematic coding was undertaken to explore the overall themes across all questions, rather than individual questions, as the same ideas were often discussed across more than one question. Ideas were highlighted as important and organised into categories by Author 1 and 2. Final themes were checked by Author 3.

The survey contained four questions, provided below.

  1. 1.

    How long have you been engaged in science education research and what energises you in this field?

  2. 2.

    In what ways do you think science education research will remain the same over the next 5–10 years?

  3. 3.

    In what ways do you believe science education research will be different over the next 5–10 years?

  4. 4.

    What do you predict will be the key ‘innovations’ in the field (either what they will be, or what you believe they should be)?

There are a total of 31 EB members (including the two Editors-in-Chief). The EB is international, with members associated with universities in Australian, Canada, USA, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Europe and Africa. In total, we received 14 responses to the survey (45% response rate). Responses to the interview questions are thematically summarised below.

Emerging Topics and Issues

In this significant theme, where the largest number of responses were coded, participants identified a range of emergent topics and issues that would take the field of Science Education Research in a new direction. Within this theme, common emergent topics included incorporating First Nations perspectives (in research and teaching), a focus on global issues (such as Climate Change/Earth sciences/Sustainability), STEM education, and a focus on societal impacts. One participant suggested: “There will be more emphasis on the contributions of First Nations science, and how teachers can help students appreciate its place in science learning and learning about science”. Technology was also identified as an emergent topic. Technology was discussed in terms of research methods (see also ‘New Research Methods’ below), as well as an instructional innovation: “In the incorporation of virtual environments and simulated phenomena for instruction”. Two respondents also discussed technology as being important for “individualised learning”.

Core of Science Education Research

Within this theme, and acknowledging that the field of science education research will likely continue to evolve, participants noted what they thought was core to the field, and thus would not change. Unsurprisingly, participants explained that the overall aim/purpose of the field will stay the same: “It will keep advancing theories about how students learn science and how teachers can be more effective in achieving this goal”. When considering theories, a few respondents indicated that this would be something that might not undergo significant change. For instance, one respondent explained that “Theoretical insights will be the same”, whilst another added that “unless some new theory… emerges in other areas of knowledge, science education research will be working on the same themes”.

New Research Methods

In this theme, respondents indicated that there would be significant innovations in the way research in science education was conducted. For instance, respondents explained that research methods would be more quantitative, utilise technology more and would involve larger data sets that are more diverse. As one respondent puts it: “any changes would be in the ways of conducting research. Especially regarding data collection that might be (able) to cover more participants and take less time”.

Challenges/Barriers to Innovation

Across the responses to the questions, there was some discussion around challenges or barriers to innovation. One respondent, for example, lamented a stasis within the field, noting that they didn’t think much would change “structurally” and that they wished it would “move and shake a bit more”. This respondent believed that the field was limited in this way due to restricted access to funding. A similar concern was raised by another respondent, who thought that there was a “push by government” to support only certain kinds of research (i.e., quantitative). Another respondent suggested that innovation in research should be targeted at “building the strength of the knowledge base”, which would then serve as a more robust foundation on which to make decisions “at local, state and national policy levels”. There was also some concern around issues in the field that need to be addressed, including addressing “anti-science rhetoric”. One respondent raised the issue of a lack of credibility in research more generally. In spite of these concerns, respondents overall demonstrated an energetic commitment to the progress of science education research, with a strong desire to ‘make a difference’ and strengthen the knowledge base to ‘enlighten issues of concern’.

Overall, these responses were consistent with the key findings from the reviews. However, most participants responded in a way that acknowledged that significant change was coming. A range of different examples were provided, including the increased influence technology has on research methods, to the stronger socio-cultural focus, in particular, on Indigenous knowledges.

A Look at The Present

This section now turns to the present and summarises each paper included in this Special Issue, highlighting their links to the theme of innovation.

The paper presented by Brady (2023) details a method for analysing process data in computer-based learning environments (CBLEs), and demonstrates its successful application for uncovering meaningful patterns and explaining observed differences between groups within an experimental CBLE study. The method uniquely addresses current challenges in analysing process data, and can be applied to CBLEs containing dozens of elements if additional characters are included. Important findings from the study include that incorporating visual scaffolds into a CBLE can improve learning outcomes and simulations can provide learners with opportunities to practise applying their knowledge in a safe and controlled environment. This paper notably contributes to the advancement of the methodological approach of analysing process data within science education to support teaching and learning.

Mindy Chappell’s (2023) article contributes understandings about Black students’ science identities. Located in the United States, three Black high school students used ethnodance to author and narrate their evolving science identities. Chappell defines ethnodance as “an artistic representation through dance” (p. 3) and “a tool for studying identity as performative work of the self” (p. 3). She explains that for Black young people, dance can act as a means of expressivity to portray emotions and experiences. Chappell illustrates the structure-agency dialectic within Black students’ ethnodances, revealing structural supports and hinderances as well as occurrences of agency, resistance, and advocacy. Chappell’s work, as expressed through her ethnodance methodology, extends other arts-based research methods and successfully illuminates Black students’ experiences of science education. Chappell’s work is powerful in that she has researched with and for the student participants, enabling them to use their own cultural ways of being to make sense of their evolving identities.

Costello et al. (2023) advocates for an Ideologically Aware (IA) approach to teaching biology, making the argument that students must be aware that the study of biology is not value-free, and “systems of oppression, stereotypes, and biases in science” (p. 2) should be made more explicit. In the paper, the authors position IA amongst other pedagogical approaches (such as culturally relevant pedagogy and socioscientific issues), arguing that the former does not cover the same topics, and the latter does not address systems of oppression, stereotypes, and biases. Thus IA is presented as a way to highlight these under-represented aspects. The authors exemplify what an IA approach could look like in Biology teaching at the post-secondary level, including examples of teaching activities. In the final section, the authors also discuss the hesitancy associated with teaching socio-culturally relevant activities in STEM. The paper innovatively applies the use of theoretical constructs that have not typically been used in science education but have had demonstrated utility in other fields, such as philosophy and sociology. In particular, the paper presents IA as an approach rooted in critical theories that might be helpful in biology education, where socio-scientific issues are more pronounced.

Dankenbring et al. (2023) use Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to characterise abstraction within a curriculum program and its implementation. The authors analyse teacher participant talk in terms of semantic gravity (as understood within an LCT framework), which is a construct that conceptualises abstraction, in the context of delivering an integrated STEM unit on water filters for Year 6. The authors track abstraction across lessons and within lessons, and identify sections where ‘waving’ occurs (oscillation between more and less abstract), and some sections where there are ‘disconnects’ or ‘flatlines’. The authors identify waving as being important for knowledge building/meaning making. The innovation in this paper lies with the use of a relatively new sociologically-grounded theory to address questions about STEM pedagogies.

Marangio et al. (2023) offers an interesting lens through which to view ‘creative and critical thinking’. Drawing on their experience as part of the OECD initiative to develop reliable tools with which to measure creativity in high school-aged children, the researchers, who are also Initial Teacher Education lecturers, reflect on attempts to incorporate creative and critical thinking amongst their preservice teacher students. Findings reveal how creativity is valued and potentially rewarded, without being explicitly taught or assessed; how attempting to explicitly teach and assess creative and critical thinking could lead to its oversimplification, and how difficulty in precisely describing nebulous terms like ‘creativity’ and ‘critical’ thinking causes tension between instructor and students. The researchers also report a hesitancy of science education students in engaging with creative and critical thinking. This research, in focusing on creativity, is situated within a larger body of work that attempts to capture the non-cognitive ‘workplace-ready’ skills required of our future citizens.

The qualitative paper by Marshall (2023) explores the important role of elementary principals in influencing students’ classroom experiences of science education, in the context of the implementation of a new science curriculum in a district serving predominantly marginalised students in the USA. The study draws on organisational theory and social capital theory to understand how elementary principals, as boundary spanners, enact science policy and practice through collective sense-making. Marshall brings to light some of the challenges that elementary principals face in promoting science education and suggests that although these principals have the potential to be instrumental in equitable decision-making for science education, their roles as science leaders is not always developed or nurtured.

The unique contribution of the paper by Ong et al. (2023) is the proposal and ongoing development of a new integrated STEM classroom observation protocol (iSTEM protocol) that addresses pedagogical gaps in existing protocols. The proposed iSTEM protocol has been designed by the authors to assess the quality of integrated STEM instruction in K-12 classrooms using the Productive Disciplinary Engagement Framework, which emphasises the importance of students’ active participation in authentic disciplinary practices to develop their understanding of STEM concepts and skills. This approach provides a standardised way to assess integrated STEM instruction and can be used by educators and researchers to identify areas where practices could be improved.

Park and colleagues (Park et al., 2023) take the Special Issue theme of ‘innovation’ quite literally, questioning what this may look like for Nature of Science (NOS) research. The authors present an analytical reconstruction of their collective reflections on the topic, garnered from eight months of communications in the form of written reflections, online meetings, emails, and so on. Their methodology diverges from tradition by blurring the boundaries of data generation and analysis, as they expressed, analysed, and theorised thoughts and experiences about the future of NOS research over an extended period of time. Park et al. (2023) found a shared motivation for innovation in NOS among the ECR authors. The authors’ identified four areas of innovation for future research as well as barriers to innovation for future consideration. Park et al.’s (2023) article not only ‘talks the talk’ in terms of innovation in NOS research, but the authors ‘walk the walk’ in terms of their execution and writing-up of the research which pushes the boundaries of traditionally accepted research designs.

We have defined innovation in the context of science education research as encompassing new, divergent, and creative approaches that aim to bring about social change. In terms of ‘new’ research to be focused on new frontiers or topics or contemporaneous responses to current issues. The articles in this special issue led by Karen Marangio and Yann Shiou Ong are on new ideas in science education research, namely creative and critical thinking (Marangio) and STEM education (Ong). The article written by Stefanie Marshall focuses on a new participant group that is underrepresented in science education research – school principals. We take ‘divergent’ research to mean otherwise different to the traditional/typical approach, and possibly controversial or contentious. The paper in this special issue led by Wonyong Park is divergent in that it reflects on an established research area, Nature of Science, in a different way. ‘Creative’ research might involve adopting or adapting questions, theories, and methods from another discipline and applying them to science education. We believe the papers led by Mindy Chappell, Robin Costello, Chelsey Dankenbring, and Anna Brady offer creative insights for science education research in terms of their successful application of concepts and methods from other fields to important topics in science education.

Summary

In this introduction to the Special Issue we have explored ECR innovations in science education research. We have journeyed through the historical landscape of the field, examined emerging research topics and methods, and illuminated the diverse and impactful ways in which ECRs are pushing the boundaries of science education.

As Special Issue Editors, we find it heartening to witness the enthusiasm and commitment of ECRs in driving innovation in science education research. Their work not only advance methodologies and perspectives in the field but also fosters a more inclusive and socially relevant approach to science education. The papers in this Special Issue exemplify the dynamic nature of science education research and its potential to shape the future of education in new, divergent, and creative ways.

In conclusion, the future of science education research is bright, as it continues to evolve in response to changing societal needs, technological advancements, and educational challenges. ECRs play a pivotal role in this evolution, and their innovative contributions are paving the way for a more vibrant and impactful field. We look forward to witnessing the continued growth and transformation of science education research, driven by the creativity, passion, and dedication of the next generation of scholars.