Learning, Its Education and Its Contemporary Theoretical Complexities

Dear Colleagues, 

In recent times, there has been a notable interest in learning as a subject matter of theory, practice and policy. The notion of learning has overtaken in popularity many other concepts of educational origin. Reformulated in one way or another, the concept (and idea) of learning has been transferred to many fields and has enjoyed largely positive connotations. It is now one of the more popular preoccupations and themes in educational administration and policy, in organization and management theory and in various cross-disciplinary studies.

An implication of the growing popularity of learning has been its normativization as a good thing that must be obtained by, and be available to, everyone. A concomitant implication is that many challenges of our post-digital, trans-cultural and uncertain times are described as learning challenges. Even the world of our century is described as a learning one. Such theorizations of our world as learning are indicative of a broader and, indeed, profound shift towards using learning to qualify socio-politically significant entities such as organizations, cities, even the age and the society as a whole. At the same time, learning as such becomes also qualified and premodified as lifelong, critical, expansive, hybrid, collaborative, etc., within the expanding literature that has accompanied the scholarly trajectory of learning as a facilitator of the advent of a more desirable future.

However, the so-called “learning turn” has also met critical responses, from mild ones that aspire to direct it to novel conceptions that will address novel situations (e.g., pandemics, climate change, etc.) to more challenging engagements that condemn undesirable politics of learning such as learnification. Learning is not only associated with the betterment of human life; it is also investigated for complicities in competitive processes that make the individual learner responsible for pathologies that are primarily socio-political. 

This Special Issue takes the aforementioned information into consideration and, in line with the journal’s aims and purposes, it aspires to advance the interdisciplinary, theoretical exploration of the topic of learning and its cognates. The special Issue invites you to address themes, questions and challenges such as the following:

• The nature and purpose of learning;
• The connection of learning with unlearning or with the resistance to the identity of the learner;
• The relationship of learning to knowledge, economy and society; 
• The fluctuations in the use of learning as a premodifying, or premodified, valued term in the related scholarship;
• The relevance of learning to dominant educational models and to neoliberal systemic imperatives;
• The socio-political function of learning as a process that allocates individuals a place within the social and economic sphere;
• The role of the teacher in the community of learners and in corresponding educational settings;
• The implications of AI and other techno-scientific new givens for learning;
• The potential of learning (and its theories) being either reproductive or transformative of human individual or collective action;
• The possibility of learning functioning in mechanistic, acquisitive and soporific ways and thus undermining visions of change and justice;
• The prospect of learning becoming material for co-creation, resistance and subversion, against political apathy and adaptation in a world that is often described as post-truth;
• The metaphors and theorizations of learning that range from adaptive ones that emphasize knowledge acquisition and transmission, to more collaborative ones that promote participation, situatedness and relationality and down to more flowing and “chaotic” ones that acknowledge the process character of learning and its unpredictable, fluid politics.  

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

education sciences; educational philosophy and theory; organization/management theory; policy studies 

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Prof. Dr. Marianna Papastephanou
Dr. Kalli Drousioti
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.

• learning
• unlearning
• knowledge
• critique
• transformation
• adaptation