Perturbing Current Boundary Conditions in Discipline-Based and Science Education Research in the Anthropocene: Implications for Research and Teaching Communities

The field of research on science teaching and learning at the college level has recently divided into disciplinary communities. In this chapter, we meet in the middle of our disciplinary inquiries in astronomy education x geoscience education x education research to make meaning of the possibilities between and among our communities, and within the broader landscape of research on science teaching and learning. By examining knowledge at the interface of these disciplines, we believe we can use science teaching and learning to address problems facing humans and nonhumans today. Accordingly, we looked for ways to generate an affective sense of freedom to communicate and deliberate across perceived discipline-based education research community boundaries both in our research and in our teaching. Playing with geologic representations rendered during five research meetings over the course of three years, we explored possibilities of and limitations to disciplinary perturbations. We examined our previous engagements to convey real-time difficulties and humors involved with communicating across disciplines, with an aspiration to carve joy into our readers’ continued inquiries with others in our broader, shared science teaching and learning research landscape.