ABSTRACT
In 2000, De Jong described the lack of interaction between the fields of educational research and curriculum development as one of the overarching systemic failures of current science education. Eilks and Ralle (2002) suggested considering both of these fields as being science education research if the methodology of curriculum reform is evidence-based. They defined these areas as two different academic orientations within science education research: empirical research on learning processes and curriculum development, as pure and applied research respectively. Although both fields need to be related to one another they are often separated because of the different foci, objectives and the research methods used in each field. This creates a problem, emphasized by critics, in which two, more-or-less independent, communities exist. Several papers have stated that empirical research frequently ignores the real needs of the practitioners and doesn’t communicate its findings well enough to educators “in the trenches”. On the other hand, curriculum developers sometimes fail to take research evidence on teaching and learning thoroughly into account, and often also neglect questions of sustainable implementation (e.g. De Jong 2000; Costa et al. 2000; Taber 2001; Eilks and Ralle 2002).
