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INTRODUCTION The community of geoscience education researchers (GER) has reached a critical juncture where it is taking inventory in regard to the work that has been accomplished and what questions still need to be answered in GER. Through cross-community participation in a series of recent workshops (St. John et al., 2015, 2016, 2017; Macdonald, 2016), the GER community discussed pathways forward that may have the greatest collective impact on advancing teaching and learning in the field. As a result, this theme issue Synthesizing Geoscience Education Research: Where are we? What is the path forward? was proposed. One of the justifications for the theme issue was the identified need to increase the strength of evidence in the geoscience education research literature. Using the strength of evidence pyramid (Fig. 1; for further explanation, see St. John and McNeal, 2017), we have categorized the past year (Fig. 1) of published articles in the Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE). Using the recent JGE issue as a gauge, it is clear that the geoscience literature has been lacking in regard to systematic review papers as well as meta-analyses. Review papers provide strong evidence for what has been done in the field and what future steps may need to be taken in a particular research area through the identification and articulation of the current state of the collective research in a given topic area. Meta-analyses combine datasets that a series of researchers have published and address higher order questions that require multiple data sources through largescale analyses of the collective datasets. This JGE special issue contributes 11 literature reviews to the community. It also contributes a high number of commentary papers (six) and editorials (two). The community has collectively thought about future research needs and potential areas of growth, and the commentary paper submission category in the JGE allows for authors to discuss a variety of topics that are of interest to the GER community. Both literature reviews and commentary papers are peer reviewed in the JGE. This special issue also contributes a curriculum and instruction (C&I) paper and a research paper. Most of the previous submissions to JGE can be categorized as either case or cohort studies, with a few practitioner knowledge pieces (e.g., commentaries) (Fig. 1). Nearly equal distribution of C&I and research papers are typically published, with C&I manuscripts being slightly greater. This special issue significantly adds manuscripts within the literature review and practitioner knowledge categories of the strength of evidence pyramid. Unfortunately, the GER community is not yet capable of producing robust meta-analyses as there is currently no formal mechanism in place to share datasets. This is, in part, an infrastructure issue as well as an institutional review board (IRB) issue, since all of the data for GER research is protected by IRB human subjects review, and to share the data on a larger scale, researchers need to include such requests in their IRB applications prior to conducting the research. There are strategies to work these issues out, and they are being discussed currently within the GER community. However, to date no mechanisms for sharing datasets have been put in place making it difficult to complete metaanalysis research in GER. Highlighted in this theme issue is a collection of articles focused on GER practice and community development (Kastens and Krumhansl, p. 373; Manduca, p. 416; Shipley et al., p. 354; and St. John and McNeal, p. 363), graduate training (Bitting et al., p. 519; and McNeal and Petcovic, p. 399), access and success in the geosciences (Callahan et al., p. 563; Carabajal et al., p. 531; McDaris and Manduca, p. 407; and Wolfe and Riggs, p. 577), teaching practice (Cheek et al., p. 455; Holder et al., p. 490; Liu et al., p. 435; McConnell et al., p. 604; Ormand et al., p. 426; and Scherer et al., p. 473), and cognition and affect (Jaeger et al., p. 506; Semken et al., p. 542; Shipley and Tikoff, p. 393; and van der Hoeven Kraft, p. 594). We recognize that there are many other areas that could have been written about as important topics for consideration for future directions in GER, and this special issue is not intended to be an exhaustive list of manuscripts or ideas. Rather, it is an attempt to move the community forward adding resources as we continue to collectively consider the path forward. Whether you are long vested in GER or are new to the geoscience education research field, this special issue provides a wealth of information about some of the key research areas in GER, as well as provide the impetus for research you may be interested in pursuing in the future. We summarize each of the articles included in this issue in the sections below.