Educational researchers, scholars, theoreticians, policy-makers, and practitioners define, interpret, and enact culture in various ways. The culture of science, culture of school science, culture of science classrooms, and cultures of individual actors in the science educative process are among the many ways in which culture has been cast and examined in science education literature. Many studies describe culture and examine its role in the participation in and the teaching and learning of science but fewer studies rigorously investigate and little scholarship comprehensively entertains culture as a mechanism to address the numerous challenges that exist in science education. Research and scholarship that position culture as a vehicle for reform can contribute to the education of the world's populace. For example, it can yield novel frameworks for a deeper understanding of past persistent problems like the underachievement of groups who occupy the lower strata of societies and effective solutions for new problems that emerge in the 21st century. The JRST Editorial Team invites you to prepare and submit a manuscript for the forthcoming issue on culture and science education in the 21st century. The special issue will discuss, with respect to culture, where science education has been, where it is, and where it is going, could or should go. Submitted manuscripts should explicitly articulate conceptualizations of culture employed, cogently situate these conceptualizations within theories or conceptual frameworks, and clearly identify domains most pertinent to the manuscript, including, but not limited to, achievement, assessment, curriculum, equity, parental involvement, preparation of professionals, science educational contexts, science learners, science learning, or science teaching. We welcome contributions that highlight U.S., international, or a combination of contexts. We solicit manuscripts based upon empirical data–qualitative, quantitative or both—situated in classrooms, communities and informal learning environments or that offer important theoretical or conceptual insights for the field of science education. We issue a special invitation for manuscripts that (1) extend the current work on culture in science education in new directions, (2) introduce new perspectives, conceptual or methodological, from other fields to the corpus of science education literature on culture, and (3) inform policy by connecting policy and culture. Deadline for Manuscript Submissions: April 15, 2012 Expected Publication Date: January 2013 Submissions of manuscripts should follow the publication guidelines for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and be submitted electronically to Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrst). Select ‘yes’ for Special Issue in Step 5 of the submission process, and identify the special theme title as ‘Sociocultural’. Manuscripts selected after competitive, peer-reviewed process, will be published with reaction from experts in the field. Inquiries concerning the suitability of possible contributions to this special issue should be encouraged to send directly by e-mail to: Eileen Carlton Parsons, rparsons@email.unc.edu Angela Calabrese Barton, acb@msu.edu