Learning in Digital Ecologies: Everyday Informal Education and the Fabrication of Social Worlds

Dear Colleagues,

The expansion of digital media and technologies has profoundly reshaped how individuals engage with knowledge, navigate their environments, and construct meaning in their everyday lives. While education has traditionally been examined in formal and informal settings, this Special Issue focuses specifically on the often-invisible, taken-for-granted processes of informal education embedded in the fabric of daily life. These dynamics unfold in spontaneous interactions, digital engagements, and habitual practices, shaping how individuals acquire knowledge, negotiate identities, and participate in social worlds without necessarily recognizing these processes as “education”.

By examining how digital tools, platforms, and networks mediate these subtle yet pervasive forms of informal education, we seek to illuminate their role in the fabrication of epistemic and deontic practices. Specifically, we aim to explore how digital environments shape what is considered valid knowledge, who is recognized as an epistemic authority, and how norms, responsibilities, and moral expectations are negotiated in everyday digital interactions. Here, digital interactions refer not only to human communication through digital media but also to the ways individuals engage with—and are influenced by—algorithmic systems, artificial intelligence, and other digital agents that shape learning, decision-making, and social participation. At the same time, these processes are deeply entangled with identity construction, as individuals position themselves and others within shifting frameworks of expertise, legitimacy, and belonging. Moreover, informal education in digital ecologies unfolds across an individual’s lifespan, shaping how individuals of different ages acquire knowledge, adapt to technological change, and navigate digital environments. From young people developing skills in online communities and parents using digital platforms for caregiving guidance to older adults engaging with digital tools to manage health, maintain social connections, or access information, informal learning practices are deeply embedded in everyday digital interactions. By considering diverse life stages and user experiences, this Special Issue seeks to explore how digital ecologies mediate informal education across different social, generational, and technological contexts.

This Special Issue invites contributions that critically examine the entanglements of digital media and everyday informal education, shedding light on how these processes sustain, challenge, or transform knowledge production, normative expectations, and the ways in which identities are shaped and contested in an increasingly digitized society.

Topics of Interest:

We invite contributions from scholars and practitioners that address, but are not limited to, the following interrelated thematic areas:

1. Digital Ecologies and Everyday Informal Education

• How do individuals of different ages, including children, parents, and older adults, engage in informal learning through their everyday interactions with digital tools, platforms, and algorithmic systems?
• In what ways do apps, social media, forums, and generative AI (e.g., chatbots, recommendation algorithms) mediate knowledge acquisition and the negotiation of norms, roles, and responsibilities?
• Case studies on tacit, embodied, or invisible learning processes that unfold in digital environments without being explicitly recognized as “education”.

2. Digital Interactions and the Fabrication of Epistemic and Deontic Practices

• How do digital interactions—not only human communication but also engagements with AI, algorithms, and other digital agents—shape what is considered valid knowledge and who is recognized as an epistemic authority?
• What role do digital environments play in shaping moral expectations, responsibilities, and normative frameworks in everyday life?
• How do different actors, such as young people, parents, older adults, and communities, use digital media to navigate and negotiate emerging learning challenges?

3. Identity, Social Belonging, and Everyday Learning

• How does informal education through digital media shape identity construction, self-perception, and social positioning across different life stages?

• What role do digital platforms play in producing, reinforcing, or challenging social hierarchies and categories of belonging?
• How do individuals develop competencies, strategies, and discursive practices to navigate the tensions between institutionalized knowledge and everyday informal learning?

4. Affordances and the Agency of Human and Non-Human Actors

• How do the material properties of digital media shape informal learning practices, from platform affordances to the embodied interactions between humans and digital agents?
• In what ways do AI systems, algorithms, and other non-human agents exert agency in shaping knowledge practices, decision-making, and identity construction?
• How do individuals at different life stages experience, appropriate, or resist the affordances embedded in digital technologies?

5. Generative AI and the Reconfiguration of Learning

• How do AI-driven systems reshape informal learning by structuring access to information, influencing decision-making, or reinforcing particular epistemic frameworks?
• In what ways do algorithmic recommendations, chatbot interactions, and AI-generated content affect the negotiation of authority, expertise, and trust in everyday learning processes?
• Ethical considerations and socio-cultural implications of AI-mediated informal education.

6. The Cultural and Political Dimensions of Everyday Learning

• How do informal learning practices through digital media contribute to the (re)production, contestation, or transformation of dominant social imaginaries?
• Digital media as a space for negotiating norms, values, and power dynamics in everyday life.
• Learning through digital activism, countercultures, and participation in civic and cultural initiatives.

7. Methodological Innovations for Studying Everyday Informal Education

• New approaches to capturing invisible, embodied, or taken-for-granted learning practices in digital ecologies, including digital ethnography, multimodal analysis, and longitudinal qualitative designs.
• Methodological challenges in researching informal learning processes shaped by interactions with AI, algorithmic systems, and participatory digital environments.
• Ethical dilemmas in studying informal education in highly mediated, dynamic, and context-dependent settings.

Submission Guidelines:

This Special Issue welcomes empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions, as well as critical, philosophical, and epistemological perspectives that engage with the complexities of everyday informal education in digital ecologies.

Why Contribute to this Special Issue?

• Showcase your research in a leading open-access journal.
• Reach a global audience of scholars and practitioners.
• Contribute to advancing interdisciplinary knowledge on informal learning and digital ecologies.

For inquiries or to discuss potential submissions, please get in touch with the Guest Editor, Dr. Davide Cino, at davide.cino@unimib.it. We look forward to receiving your contributions!

Dr. Davide Cino
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

• informal learning
• digital ecologies
• everyday education
• epistemic practices
• deontic practices
• digital literacy
• identity and learning
• lifelong learning
• intergenerational knowledge
• digital participation