Learning in Context

We are most happy to add another journal to our portfolio! Submissions to contribute to the very first issue of "Learning in Context" are now welcome!

Aim and scope

This journal will offer opportunities to disseminate relevant research on teaching and on learning, as evidenced through the experiences and perspectives of key actors and participants. We welcome studies originating from contexts across the lifecourse, ranging from formal school settings, higher education, workplace settings, and informal learning situations. The emphasis is on situated accounts of individual, institutional, cultural, and societal dimensions of learning. This may address the processes of teaching and learning, and in particular, the relations, dynamics and temporality in such processes.

The journal welcomes studies which report empirical research and theoretical analyses, including those adopting interdisciplinary frameworks. The journal creates space for dissemination of high-quality studies on learning and teaching that employ qualitative approaches (narrative, interaction, discursive analyses, phenomenography, grounded theory, case studies, design-based research; formative interventions etc.) and mixed method studies.

The journal is published by Elsevier.

Submit your proposal for regular journal contribution

Contribute to the first special issue!

Setting the scene for Learning in Context and what publications are expected to encompass

The launch of the journal Learning in Context reflects EARLI's ambition to highlight a field where insights into teaching and learning are rooted in interpretations grounded in their specific contexts. This ambition stems from the recognition that the actions, intentions and perspectives of all participants including teachers, students, families and educational leaders, are key to understanding the situations and the phenomena of teaching and learning in ways that recognize their non-uniform, multifaceted and fundamentally open nature.

Central to this field is context, which encompasses elements such as geographic location and time, the timing and general and specific purposes of the situations examined, as well as the history of the individuals and communities involved. It also includes unique experiences of the key actors and participants that together constitute the multifaceted interpretative frame of events investigated or narrated. These contexts may span across the lifecourse, from formal school settings, higher education, workplace settings, informal learning situations, intentional and non-intentional learning. The context is not understood as a mere setting, but rather as including the participants and their history, perspective and characteristics, the tools involved, the activities performed, and the relationships between these elements.

A shared feature of articles published in the journal will be a clear conceptual and nuanced description of the context of the study, having varying emphases and definitions, but carefully argued and theoretically consistent. Descriptions of the context would thus be expected to be well conceptualized, relevant and to the point as well as taking the perspective that is most consistent with the research described or the position taken. Relevant perspectives include those in which individuals are an integral part of the contexts; the cognitive perspective that focuses on how the context is perceived and processed; the phenomenological perspective that emphasizes the experiential and bodily character of context as constituent in perceiving meaning; the constructivist, socio-constructivist, and cultural perspectives that consider the context not as objective but rather as subjectively and intersubjectively constructed. Additional relevant perspectives may focus on context in ways that highlight the relationship between nature and culture such as the socio-ecological view or any instance of linguistic anthropology that examines how meanings are negotiated by participants in interactions with tools, objects, and tasks.

It is important to adequately render the dynamic nature of contexts and the relationship of mutual influence between various levels of the context – for example individual, community, institutional, cultural or systemic. Perspectives highlighting dynamics and interplay between context at different levels may, for example, show how practices and community context sharpen participants' perceptions of tasks and phenomena and how variation in skills and expertise lead to different utilization of similar contexts. Context may in this sense be described on an individual or collective level as a "space of thought" or symbolic space, which includes conceptual and material elements that potentially are perceived and used in a range of different ways.

This broad understanding of context is expected to enhance a focus – empirical or theoretical - of situated accounts of individual, institutional, cultural, and societal dimensions of learning. This may address the processes of teaching and learning, and the relations, dynamics and temporality in such processes. The journal is open to a broad interpretation of learning that is well grounded in this kind of understanding of context, complementing the broad understanding of learning across the EARLI community.

Proposals should include:

Title and abstract, maximum 1000 words excluding references

Brief bio of contributing authors, maximum 100 words each

Submission should be made via email to Åke Ingerman: ake.ingerman@gu.se

Timeline

Deadline for submissions of abstract proposals: November 14, 2024

Notification of acceptance of abstracts: December 1, 2024

Submission of full paper: April 15, 2025

Following review, revision is expected to be completed in late June.

Publication: August 2025

Call to Special Issue