Cross‐disciplinary collaborations

From the editors' introduction: “Although single‐discipline investigations are arguably still the norm in most education research, government funding agencies worldwide have stepped up the call over the last several years for collaborations that span more than one field of inquiry. A major assumption behind this call is that multidisciplinary research will lead to a more integrated knowledge base—one suitable for informing the increasingly complex world in which we live. As editors, we wondered to what degree researchers in disciplines outside literacy education perceived a need for collaborations between their fields and our own. Moreover, we were interested in their perceptions of how the literacy research community might respond to overtures for collaborative work that transgresses traditional boundaries.… In their separately authored pieces in the current New Directions in Research, researchers Paul Cobb (mathematics education), Shirley Brice Heath (the arts), Bruce VanSledright (history education), and Larry Yore and colleagues (science education) define their areas of inquiry and discuss issues they perceive will influence the degree to which cross‐displinary collaborations with researchers in literacy education are deemed feasible. They also share their thinking about the research that needs to be done and some caveats worth considering.”