Framing Transfer Expansively: Tests, Applications, Extensions, and Reviews

Dear Colleagues,

Scholars have long pursued “generative” learning that can be transferred readily and widely. This Special Issue of Education Sciences invites empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions concerning Randi Engle’s (1967-2012) learning transfer framework known as expansive framing. Expansive framing is a situative account of how learners come to understand knowledge, practices, and identities as relevant across times, places, people, and problems. However, expansive framing is also a set of design principles for fostering generative learning. Engle and many others have used expansive framing to understand and support transfer and generative learning. This work has been carried out primarily in science education, but it has also been conducted in mathematics, computer science, teacher education, language arts, social justice, and other fields.

This Special Issue will honor and advance Engle’s legacy by publishing tests of her hypotheses, applications of her design principles, extensions of her theories, and reviews of the research. While we are particularly interested in contributions that employ the five explanations of expansive framing in Engle et al. (2012, see below), we welcome diverse contributions across classrooms, informal settings, culturally sustaining settings, professional education, digital environments, generative AI, published research, etc. We will extend theoretical and empirical understanding of how, when, and for whom expansive framing facilitates transfer, critically compare expansive framing with other accounts of transfer, and explore how expansive framing is operationalized and measured.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Hickey
Dr. Rebekah Jongewaard
Prof. Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn
Guest Editors

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