The following conversation with Michael R. Matthews took place in May and June of 2010 via e-mail after his visit to Istanbul and Ankara for giving seminars on “The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science to Science Teaching and Research” at Bogazici University and Hacettepe University. Our conversation included topics such as Michael’s educational background, science teacher education in relation to history and philosophy of science, worldviews, nature of science, constructivism, possible future directions for research, and advices for junior scholars and doctoral students. We believe that Michael’s generous answers to our questions will be of interest to all science education researchers around the world.

Key words: history and philosophy of science, worldviews, nature of science, features of science, constructivism, science teacher education.

The free-market economy is being continually challenged – by governments, monopolies, “too big to fail” enterprises, global banks and social experimentation. Crisis is still considered to be a failure of the capitalistic system rather than a failure of the politicized state and governmental institutions unable to abstain from interfering with free-market fundamentals. Crisis represents a necessary catharsis which periodically renews and regenerates prevailing business ecology. At the same time, especially with the current crisis, the system is undergoing fundamental transformation, change of paradigm and change of dominant business models. Transformations get naturally confounded with crises. Man’s failure and challenge is that we repeatedly fail to do the catharsis of crisis – without the crisis. Disentangling the phenomena of crisis from those of transformation is the main aim of this paper. We address the issues of unemployment in the post-crisis environment, especially in the U.S. We trace the difficulties to treating the economy as a deterministic machine while it behaves as an adaptive organism. Relevance: It is claimed that the theory of autopoiesis is applicable to social, business and management systems because they are mostly natural, spontaneous, self-organizing and self-equilibrating organisms, not mechanistic contrivances.

Educational researchers have begun recently to identify and study key processes through which students self-regulate their academic learning. In this overview, I present a general definition of self-regulated academic learning and identify the distinctive features of this capability for acquiring knowledge and skill. Drawing on subsequent articles in this journal issue as well as my research with colleagues, I discuss how the study of component processes contributes to our growing understanding of the distinctive features of students’ self-regulated learning. Finally, the implications of self-regulated learning perspective on students’ learning and achievement are considered.

Context: Cognitive science, as an interdisciplinary research endeavour, poses challenges for teaching and learning insofar as the integration of various participating disciplines requires a reflective approach, considering and making explicit different epistemological attitudes and hidden assumptions and premises. Only few curricula in cognitive science face this integrative challenge. Problem: The lack of integrative activities might result from different challenges for people involved in truly interdisciplinary efforts, such as discussing issues on a conceptual level, negotiating colliding frameworks or sets of premises, asking profound questions challenging one’s own paradigm, and differences in terminologies, as well as from the “personal” challenge of realising one’s own limits of knowledge and, hence, the need to trust in another person’s expertise. This implies that the proposed curriculum structure provides an “epistemic laboratory”: a space for experiencing and negotiating, as well as constructing different viewpoints in a trustful setting. Approach: A newly-designed interdisciplinary cognitive science curriculum is presented that is based on a constructivist epistemology. We suggest that a careful construction of the learning space is a necessary requirement. The MEi:CogSci curriculum is designed and structured in such a way that enables didactical measures that allow for collaborative construction of meaning by discussing concepts, methods and terminologies and also hidden assumptions. Findings: The experience with four cohorts of students has shown that a truly interdisciplinary approach to cognitive science demands a different attitude towards knowledge as well as towards teaching and learning on both sides: the teacher and the student. The research orientation promotes an understanding of knowledge as something that is actively constructed, rendering the role of the teacher that of a co-learner rather than a transmitter of knowledge, thereby also changing the responsibility of students.

Key words: learning space, interdisciplinarity, cognitive science, curriculum design, epistemological reflection, teacher, constructivist pedagogy