Journal of the Learning Sciences invites proposals for a special issue to be published in 2023. Instructions for preparing a proposal are posted on the Instructions to Authors at the publisher’s website, https://tinyurl.com/y9neyuhd. Proposals are due December 14, 2020 and will be peer reviewed by the journal’s editorial leadership team. We will notify the submitters of the accepted proposal in February 2021.

 We are especially interested in proposals that develop emerging areas of research and conceptual/methodological innovations that will shape the future of the field and increase its impact on practice and policy.  For example, we welcome proposals that address topics including – and not limited to – teacher learning and design; learning and development as part of social activism; changing notions of expertise in transforming technological and relational contexts; analyses of learning at the intersection of race, equity, and technology development; methodological innovations foregrounding the ethical, political, cognitive, and socio-emotional dimensions of learning across the lifespan, possibly linking to new approaches to data analytics; and synergy-building across disciplinary perspectives and frameworks to understand key dimensions of learning.

• Are you a PhD or Postdoc?
• Are you interested in Learning Sciences?
• Are you up for meeting peers and experts in the field?

This year, as part of our annual analysis of how the journal is doing, we looked at the fate of articles for which we issues an invitation to revise and resubmit. We looked at all such invitations made in 2017 and 2018. A "revise and resubmit" decision is really a rejection with an invitation to try again, and is accompanied by a lot of feedback. If the article is resubmitted it is again sent out form a full review. It turns out the news is rather good! Almost 70% of invitations resulted in resubmissions within one year, and more than 50% of those were eventually accepted. Things could be better in terms of the number of (timely) resubmissions and the quality of the revisions, but the odds of getting an article accepted after an invitation to revise and resubmit are much better than starting over at another high-impact journal. So, send us your revised paper if you have been invited.

We would like to share the top 3 articles from the last 5 years in terns of SSCI citations as of a few weeks ago. We also show the number of views at the publisher website.

1. Gutierrez, K. D. & Jurow, A. S. (2016). Social Design Experiments: Toward equity by design. 49 citations and 3268 views. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1204548
2. Akkerman, S., & Bruining, T. (2016). Multilevel boundary crossing in a professional development school partnerships. 42 citations and 3656 views. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1147448
3. Sannino, A. et al. (2016). Formative interventions for expansive learning and transformative agency. 38 citations and 3542 views. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1204547 

Congratulations to all the authors!

JLS will have a new lay-out that the publisher has already implemented for some other journals. This change applies to all new accepted articles.

The biggest change is the introduction of structured abstracts for regular and special issue articles (not Reports and Reflections). From now the structured abstract should be less than 200 words and have the following elements: Background, Methods, Findings, and Contribution. We hope that structured abstracts will help bring out the significance of the paper. "Background" can help to link the article to previous work in the field of the learning sciences and beyond it. "Contribution" goes beyond a conclusion based on empirical findings to what the article adds to the literature (i.e., why would future research refer to the findings? What are the implications).

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.

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.

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.

The Best Paper Published in JLS Awards for 2017 were announced on June 27, at the closing of ICLS. There were two $500-awards in this inaugural year. Congratulations to all the authors! Both papers are open-access till the end of August.

Chi, M. T. H., Kang, S. & and Yagmourian, D. (2017). “Why students learn more from dialogue than monologue videos: Analyses of peer interactions”. JLS, 26 (1), 10-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1204546

In our editorial in 2017 we noted that JLS had completed 25 years of publication. In that period it has been a consistently high-performing journal, and one of the flagship journals for the field of the learning sciences.

We are excited to announce that, beginning with volume 26 (2017), we have a created a new feature:  the annual Best Paper Published in JLS Award. The award recognises exceptional scholarship and contributions made to the field of the learning sciences via JLS, and permits reflection on the state of scholarship in the field beyond what is possible during the peer review process. Candidates for the award are nominated by the editors and associate editors, and the winner is selected by an external panel of distinguished learning scientists.

Part of JLS's social media strategy, we have begun to organise webinars in which an author discusses a new paper with a panel and audience. We've had 2 so far, and they have both been very engaging conversations! It is a great way to have a conversation about your new paper with some of the people you think need to know about it. We record the video (and edit it for length if necessary) and make it available here, so this is a good resource that can be used with the article, for example if you use it in a course. Seeing seasoned scholars discuss a research article can be a great learning experience for graduate students.

In the most recent webinar, Kevin O'Neill discussed his thought provoking Reports and Reflections article with Rogers Hall,Brian K. Smith and Josh Radinsky. O'Neill looked at big "failures" in modern architecture and urban design to see what we can learn from them for design research. In doing so, he makes a distinction between "designing for the future", that is, designing interventions that address conditions that we can reasonably expect to last, and "deigning the future", where one tries to create a new educational reality. The webinar especially explored faulty predictions and the unintended consequences of designs. Want to know more about what the picture shown here has to do with design research? Watch the full webinar video here.