This past weekend, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel from Kiel, Germany to Nicosia, Cyprus at the invitation of colleagues in the School of Humanities, Social, and Education Sciences at the European University-Cyprus. Each spring, the Department of Education Sciences holds day-long colloquium for Ph.D. students with a focus on enhancing their education research skills and sharing international perspectives on education research. I had the pleasure of presenting and facilitating a working session on the role of theory in education research. My presentation, entitled, “Theory in Education Research: The Reciprocity of Scholarly Thought and Action”, focused on some foundational ideas about the reciprocal relationship between theory and empirical research. As part of the session, students used examples from current CliMES project and PISA analyses to explore these ideas through concrete examples. This was an engaging ‘value-added’ opportunity made possible by my Fulbright and really fun to think explicitly about some of these aspects of our scholarly work that become increasingly internalized over time. Many thanks to Prof. Loucas Louca for the invitation to make the quick trip to Cyprus.