Bold, Humble, Collaborative, and Virtuous: The Future of Theory Development in Educational Psychology

Throughout 2023 and 2024, we served as co-guest editors of a topical collection in Educational Psychology Review on The Past, Present, and Future of Theory Development in Educational Psychology. In this topical collection, authors of prominent theories in the field were invited to reflect upon how they generated, developed, and iterated their ideas, as well as what the future might hold for their theories. Our hope was these articles could serve as examples of how theory building happens, normalizations of the often difficult and circuitous paths theories can take from initial observations to formalizations, and inspirations to others to begin their own theory development journey. In this reflection on the topical collection, we present themes that emerged as we curated the articles, including themes we anticipated (e.g., the many different ways theories can be generated) as well as ones we did not (e.g., the mix of boldness and intellectual humility theory generation requires). Also, we examine the epistemic virtues our authors used to evaluate their theories, such as practicality, as well as the virtues that were less commonly mentioned, such as internal consistency. Finally, we identify future directions for theory development in educational psychology, including the need to improve the climate for theory development in the field, particularly in terms of creating structures that incentivize and reward natural history work.