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SCOPE AND CONCERNS | EDITORS AND ADVISORY BOARD | ASSOCIATE EDITORS | JOURNAL PROFILE | CONTACT

ISSN 1447-9494

The International Journal of Learning provides a forum for any person with an interest in, and concern for, education at any of its levels and in any of its forms, from early childhood, to schools, to higher education and lifelong learning — and in any of its sites, from home to school to university to workplace.

The journal is relevant for academics, researchers, teachers, higher degree students, educators and educational managers and administrators – anyone with an interest in the nature and future of learning.

The International Journal of Learning is fully peer-reviewed with a rigorous refereeing process to ensure a high standard of quality. The editors and advisory board comprise leading scholars in the education field.

For information on where the journal is listed/indexed, please visit this page.

Scope and Concerns

Learning about Learning: An Agenda for Inquiry

The Learning Conference and the International Journal of Learning set out to foster inquiry, invite dialogue and build a body of knowledge on the nature and future of learning.

New Learning
We might have heard the talk in recent years of a ‘knowledge society’ and ‘new economy’ and listened with a great deal of scepticism, as we did to earlier talk of a new society. As educators, however, we need to grasp what is rhetorically or genuinely new in our times. We must seize the drift of contemporary public discourse, and position ourselves centrally. And how more appropriately than in an epoch that styles itself as a ‘knowledge society’? Here is our chance: the stuff of knowledge is no more and no less than the stuff of learning. Surely too, this new kind of society requires a new kind of learning and that a new social status is ascribed to education.

This is how we may come to consider the dimensions of a ‘new learning’. It is also how we might imagination of a possibly better society which locates education at the heart of things. This heart may well be economic in the sense that it is bound to personal ambition or corporate purposes. But this must surely also be a place of open possibilities, for personal growth, for social transformation and for the deepening of democracy. Such is the agenda of ‘new learning’, explicitly or implicitly. This agenda holds whether our work and thinking is expansive and philosophical or local and finely grained.

Learners
No learning exists, however, without learners, in all their diversity. It is a distinctive feature of the new learning to recognise the enormous variability of lifeworld circumstances that learners bring to learning. The demographics are insistent: material (class, locale), corporeal (age, race, sex and sexuality, and physical and mental characteristics) and symbolic (culture, language, gender, family, affinity and persona). This is a conceptual starting point which helps explain the telling patterns of educational and social outcomes.

Behind these demographics are real people, who have always already learned and whose range of learning possibilities are both boundless and circumscribed by what they have learned already and what they have become through that learning. Here we encounter the raw material diversity - of human experiences, dispositions, sensibilities, epistemologies and world views. These are always far more varied and complex than a first glance at the demographics would suggest. Learning succeeds or fails to the extent that it engages the varied subjectivities of learners. Engagement produces opportunity, equity and participation. Failure to engage produces failure, disadvantage and inequality.

Pedagogy
And what makes for engagement? Learning is how a person or a group comes to know, and knowing consists of a variety of types of action. In learning, a knower positions themselves in relation to the knowable, and engages (by experiencing, conceptualising, analysing or applying, for instance). A learner brings their own person to the knowing, their subjectivity. When engagement occurs, they become a more or less transformed person. Their horizons of knowing and acting have been expanded. Pedagogy is the science and practice of the dynamics of knowing. And assessment is the measure of pedagogy: interpreting the shape and extent of the knower’s transformation.

Curriculum
In places of formal and systematic teaching and learning, pedagogy occurs within larger frameworks in which the processes of engagement are given structure and order, often defined by content and methodology, hence the distinctive ‘disciplines’. Then, well might we ask, what is the nature and future of ‘literacy’, ‘numeracy’, ‘science’, ‘history’, ‘social studies’, ‘economics’, ‘physical education’ and the like? How are they connected, with each other, and a world in a state of dynamic transformation. And how do we evaluate their effectiveness as curriculum?

Education
Learning happens everywhere and all the time. It is an intrinsic part of our human natures. Education and is learning by design, in community settings specially designed as such—the institutions of early childhood, school, technical/vocational, university and adult education. Education also sometimes takes informal or semiformal forms within settings whose primary rationale is commercial or communal, including workplaces, community groups, households or public places.

Knowledge
Knowledge is the result of knowing, and learning is the business of extending the breadth of knowing.

The Learning Conference creates a forum for dialogue about the nature and future of learning and the International Journal of Learning captures knowledge about learning. They are places for presenting research and reflections on education both in general terms and through the minutiae of practice. They attempt to build an agenda for a new learning, and more ambitiously an agenda for a knowledge society which is as good as the promise of its name.

Editors and Advisory Board

Editors |Advisory Board

Editors of the International Journal of Learning

  • Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
  • Bill Cope, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

International Advisory Board

  • Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.
  • David Barton, Lancaster University, Milton Keynes, UK.
  • Mario Bello, University of Science, Cuba.
  • Dato’Abdul Razak Dzulkifli, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia.
  • Manuela du Bois-Reymond, Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands.
  • Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
  • Robert Devillar, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, USA.
  • Daniel Madrid Fernandez, University of Granada, Spain.
  • Ruth Finnegan, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
  • James Paul Gee, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.
  • Juana M. Sancho Gil, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
  • Kris Gutierrez, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
  • Anne Hickling-Hudson, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Australia.
  • Roz Ivanic, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.
  • Paul James, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
  • Carey Jewitt, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK.
  • Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
  • Andeas Kazamias, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.
  • Peter Kell, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
  • Michele Knobel, Montclair State University, Montclair, USA.
  • Gunther Kress, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK.
  • Colin Lankshear, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia.
  • Kimberly Lawless, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA.
  • Sarah Michaels, Clark University, Worcester, USA.
  • Jeffrey Mok, Miyazaki International College, Miyazaki, Japan.
  • Denise Newfield, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
  • Ernest O’Neil, Ministry of Education, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  • José-Luis Ortega, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
  • Francisco Fernandez Palomares, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
  • Ambigapathy Pandian, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia.
  • Miguel A. Pereyra, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
  • Scott Poynting, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK.
  • Angela Samuels, Montego Bay Community College, Montego Bay, Jamaica.
  • Michel Singh, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
  • Helen Smith, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
  • Richard Sohmer, Clark University, Worcester, USA.
  • Brian Street, University of London, London, UK.
  • Giorgos Tsiakalos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
  • Salim Vally, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • Gella Varnava-Skoura, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
  • Cecile Walden, Sam Sharpe Teachers College, Montego Bay, Jamaica.
  • Nicola Yelland, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.
  • Wang Yingjie, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
  • Zhou Zuoyu, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

    Associate Editors


    The International Journal of Learning, Volume 10 (Download PDF)

    The International Journal of Learning, Volume 11 (Download PDF)

    The International Journal of Learning, Volume 12 (Download PDF)

    The International Journal of Learning, Volume 13 (Download PDF)

    The International Journal of Learning, Volume 14 (Download PDF)

    Journal Profile


    STATISTICS/CITATIONS

    Statistics/citations

    At this stage we are unable to provide citation statistics as the journal is relatively new. However, we envisage a high impact factor insofar as the journal is both part of the conventional world of academic publishing and highly visible to internet search engines.

    Abstracted/Indexed in

    Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory - http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/

    Cabell’s Directory in Learning - http://www.cabells.com/

    Genamics JournalSeek - http://journalseek.net/

    ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts) - http://www.csa.com

    Australian Department of Education, Science and Training - http://www.dest.gov.au/


    Contact

Email Address
journals at commongroundpublishing com
Mail Address
PO Box 463
Altona
Victoria
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Australia