The Power and Promise of Authentic Learning in Higher Education: Critical Approaches and Practical Strategies

Dear Colleagues,

Authentic learning may be described as the activities and tasks that situate learning within contexts that are personally, professionally and socially relevant to students, connecting them to their discipline, interests, experiences and future careers. The potential benefits of authentic learning, including in terms of fostering engagement and belonging, and building the skills and knowledge relevant to real-world applications, are increasingly important to higher education institutions that aim to promote the workplace readiness of their graduates.

The successful completion of authentic learning and assessment tasks often requires deep and complex thinking and must be scaffolded across the curriculum to connect with the diverse needs of students. Increases in student numbers and diversity across institutions also creates challenges for traditional authentic learning opportunities such as practicals, field trips, internships and placements.

At the same time, the expansion of accessible software, databases, and educational technologies has broadened the potential to extend authentic learning opportunities to other delivery modes and contexts, offering powerful promise for collaborative learning across disciplinary, institutional and geographic boundaries.

In this Special Issue, we call for articles that present research work, opinion pieces and commentary examining the benefits, challenges and possibilities of building authentic learning opportunities in modern higher education contexts, including those that critically evaluate the concept of authentic learning itself and explore its meaning in the context of a rapidly changing world. We also encourage scholars from the Global South and other disadvantaged communities to share underrepresented voices in submissions to this open-access publication. 

We welcome articles that align with the following themes:

• Work-integrated learning and maintaining authenticity in a rapidly changing world;
• Building authenticity into the curriculum at scale;
• The utilisation of technologies to enhance authenticity in learning;
• Authenticity and its relationships with student motivation, engagement and belonging;
• Field-based and practical learning in modern higher education;
• Authentic assessment and assessing authenticity—definitions, utility, and challenges in implementation;
• Partnering across disciplines and externally to build authentic learning opportunities.

Dr. Elisa Bone
Dr. Hayley Bugeja
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• work-integrated learning
• problem-based learning
• authentic assessment
• technology-enhanced authentic learning
• interdisciplinary partnerships
• situated learning
• curriculum development