Workshop description  

The ICLS 2020 Doctoral Consortium, designed to support the development of doctoral students working in the area of learning sciences, provides an opportunity for participants to share their dissertation research with their peers and a panel of mentors. Participants will engage in conversations and activities designed to help them consider approaches and consequences of their research and ways to position their work in and outside of the field. Our aim is to help doctoral participants to articulate the “how,” the “for what,” the “for whom,” and the “with whom” of their research (Philip, Bang, & Jackson, 2018). To benefit from the Doctoral Consortium, applicants should be advanced graduate students and be at a stage in their dissertation research where the other participants and mentors may be of help in framing their research and writing activities.

Issue 28 (3) is available online!

IN THIS ISSUE: In Rosemary Russ and Leema Berland use activity theory to demonstrate how the pervasive tension between learning correct ideas and constructing one’s own ideas often results in unacknowledged slippage between competing activity systems within reform efforts. Marc Clarà investigates how discursively symmetric dialogue develops across lessons in collective inquiry. Doris Chin et al. test choice-based assessments (CBAs), which measure how people learn when there is minimal guidance and they must make decisions as independent learners, in the context of teaching design-thinking strategies to 6th-graders. Christina Barbieri et al. examine the effectiveness of self-explanation prompts, visual signalling cues, and a combination of the two features on middle school students’ algebra learning.

The JLS impact factor for 2018 is 3.545, which is up from 3.000 in the previous year. The current rank is 8/243 for Education and Education Research, and 7/59 in Educational Psychology. Congratulations to all the authors, editors and reviewers whose work made this good result possible.

While ISLS sees many Learning Sciences researchers around the world come to present their studies and discuss new ideas intensively at our annual conferences (ICLS and CSCL), it also recognizes that more researchers are interested in the field but cannot be at the annual conference for financial reasons. We receive many requests of support for regional or affinity group activities. There are also scientists that do research having affinity to ours, but are not aware of ISLS.

The newly initiated Grants Program for Regional and Affinity Outreach & Engagement Promoting the Learning Sciences is funding three programs this year. 

The International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) is searching for a new Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL) for 2020–2023. Applications will be welcomed either from an individual or from a team of co-Editors-in-Chief.

ijCSCL is a journal of, by and for the international CSCL research community, and, as such, applications are encouraged from active international members of this community.

The application information for the REASON program has been updated

The Munich Center of the Learning Sciences (MCLS) invites applications for 10 PhD positions (equaling 2/3 of a full academic position, amounting to approximately 29.000 – 34.000 €/year, initial duration of 24 months with the possibility of extending for one year) within the international doctoral school “Scientific Reasoning and Argumentation” (REASON) funded by the Elite Network of Bavaria (ENB) to commence in October 2019.

All information regarding the program and the application procedure is available on the REASON webpage.

In 2018, the ISLS Board approved holding a single Annual Meeting. An ad-hoc committee was subsequently appointed by the Executive Committee to develop a structure for this new annual meeting. The ad-hoc committee drew on the efforts of numerous ISLS members (including the CSCL community Committee, ISLS Conference Committee, ISLS Board members, and past CSCL and ICLS conference organizers) who over the course of the past two years have considered how to move the Society toward an annual meeting. That process resulted in the structure of the new ISLS Annual Meeting described here. The new "Annual Meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences" will feature concurrent LS and CSCL programs in a joint, annual event.

The first ISLS Annual Meeting under this new structure will take place in 2021.

In November we invited proposals for a special issue, to be published in early 2021. After reviews by the editors and associate editors of 7 proposals, we have selected: "Learning In and For Collective Social Action", to be edited by Joe Curnow (University of Manitoba) and Susan Jurow (University of Colorado). This proposal responds to a growing interest to politics, ethics and social justice in the field. We are excited about this proposal and look forward to working with the guest editors on it. Expect to see an open call for abstracts from the guest editors soon.

Reviewing is a crucial service to the field, and each year JLS formally recognises its best reviewers. Selection criteria are: completing (1) multiple reviews that are thorough (2) and timely (3); that provide mentorship to authors; and (5) reflect the core values and practices of the field.

We are excited to announce that for 2018 the editorial team has selected Angela Calabrese Barton and Anna Sfard for the recognition.

Issue 28 (1) is available online. This year we are going to 5 issues per year, so we should be able to get articles out a little quicker.

In this issue: constructing thematic interpretations (language arts); designing educational video games as objects to think with; learning science concepts from peer teaching (initial teacher education); and finding the best types of guidance for constructing self-explanations of sub-goals in programming.

On May 8 and 9, the Exploratorium will host VISUALISE, the first conference focused on creating effective visualizations for science museums and other venues for informal science education. VISUALISE will bring together museum professionals, learning researchers, computer scientists, artists, and technology developers to share their work and identify opportunities, knowledge gaps, and emerging research.

For more information, go to www.exploratorium.edu/visualise or email [email protected]

Boston College’s Lynch School of Education is delighted to announce the start, in late August, 2019, of our new Masters Program in Learning Engineering. The program will prepare students to design engaging learning experiences that are informed by the learning sciences and incorporate cutting-edge technologies. The program is experiential and interdisciplinary, leveraging the expertise of faculty from across BC’s Lynch School of Education. Throughout the one-year, on-campus program, students complete design challenges, shadow working professionals, take field trips to technology incubators and collaboratories, and intern with local organizations.

At the program’s core are its design studios and reflective seminars. Courses and 1-credit modules are designed to foster learning of how people learn, how to foster learning, how to design for learners, and how to influence a focus on learning among members of a design team. Students use what they are learning to complete their design challenges and participate in their internships. They graduate with a portfolio that showcases the depth and breadth of their design work and demonstrates their capabilities in learner-centered design, leadership, and pedagogical and technological imagination.

The Learning Science program in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University is seeking applicants for an open-rank position (Assistant, Associate, Full; application due February 1, 2019).

More information can be found here:

Call for Nominations: 
ISLS 2019 Board of Directors 

Dear ISLS members,

One of the most important ways to contribute to the International Society of the Learning Sciences is to serve on the ISLS Board of Directors. The Board consists of 12 ISLS members, who serve terms of 6 years each, and represent the range of expertise, experience levels, and geographical locations of Society members.  Elections occur every two years for four board members. The first step in this process is to solicit nominations from the membership. That is the purpose of this email.

Call for Nominations for ISLS Fellows 
Deadline for Receipt of Materials: January 15, 2019, FEBRUARY 1, 2019

We are pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2018 International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) fellows. The International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Fellows program has three main goals:

Call for Proposals 

Grants Program for Regional and Affinity Outreach & Engagement 
Promoting the Learning Sciences

While we see many Learning Sciences researchers around the world come to present their studies and discuss new ideas intensively at our annual conferences (ICLS and CSCL), we also recognize that more researchers are interested in the field but cannot be at our annual conference for financial reasons and we receive many requests of support for regional or affinity group activities. There are also scientists that do research having affinity to ours, but are not aware of ISLS.

This is a call for proposals for support for interested regional and affinity outreach and engagement activities to take place during 2019. It is our hope that the accepted projects will lead to sustainable collaboration and engagement with ISLS in future years.  Preference will be given to proposals for new programs, but proposals for support of ongoing programs will be considered. Proposals are due December 31^st, 2018. January 7, 2019.

We recently added several scholars to the editorial board: Ravit Duncan (Rutgers), Eleni Kyza (Cyprus), Crina Damsa (Oslo), Sanne Akkerman (Utrecht), and Carla Van Boxtel (Amsterdam). Bill Penuel (Colorado) will begin in February. We're excited to have all these scholars join the board!

Journal of the Learning Sciences is inviting proposals for a special issue, to be published in 2021. Instructions for preparing a proposal are posted on the Instructions to Authors at the publisher’s website, https://tinyurl.com/y9neyuhd. Proposals are due November 15, 2018 and will be peer reviewed by the journal’s editorial leadership team. Submitters of the accepted proposal will be notified by the end of January, 2019.

In general, we are interested in proposals on emerging themes in the field. For example, proposals that take up the call for research that has impact on teaching and policymaking that was elaborated in a guest editorial in issue 27 (1); proposals on teacher education and professional development; proposals that consider social justice, power and ethics in the learning sciences; and so on. This list is not meant to limit the range of possibilities but to provide some examples of possible themes.