The call for manuscripts that initiated this theme issue was as follows: What are the epistemological and ontological underpinnings associated with science education? How do the commitments associated with such underpinnings influence research into science teaching and learning? Manuscripts ought to explore historical, philosophical, sociological, and/or theoretical frames of reference for doing research in science education. Author may wish to consider what constitutes knowledge and being within a particular frame and then delineate viable research questions, methodologies, and methods as they discuss their research.
When this call first went out in 1994, we (Abell and Eichinger) each formulated in our minds the kinds of manuscripts that we expected would be submitted. We assumed that we would hear about studies that came from various research traditions or were based on particular methodologies (e.g., feminism, ethnomethodology, neo-Marxism). Such methodologies derive from beliefs or assumptions that define the nature of the limits of the inquiry. According to , these beliefs can be summarized by a researcher's responses to the following questions: What is the nature of reality? (the ontological question); What is the nature of knower and known? (the epistemological question); and, How can the researcher go about finding out? (the methodological question).
In science education, when we hear terms like ontology and epistemology, we are naturally drawn to thinking about the nature of science. Since we both also teach a course on the nature of science in science teaching we also predicted that some of the submissions to this theme issue would be the sorts of papers we typically see presented at the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching conferences (e.g., Finley, Alchin, Rhees, & Fifield, 1995).
So what were we talking about for the theme issue? Would we look at epistemology and ontology (a) from the point of view of inquiry in science education, or (b) from the point of view of the nature of science? Or was this distinction important?
Perhaps the confusion was exacerbated by the title given to this theme issue, "Epistemology and ontology." Had the title been "Emerging methodologies in science education," we would certainly have received more of the first type of manuscript. If, on the other hand, we had called the theme issue "The nature of science and science teaching," surely more of the second cate-