Journal of the Learning Sciences: An Overview

The Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS) stands as a multidisciplinary forum dedicated to the presentation and discussion of groundbreaking ideas poised to reshape our understanding of learning and teaching. As one of the two official publications of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), alongside the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL), JLS consistently ranks among the top journals in educational research.

Historical Context and Mission

Established in 1991, JLS has been instrumental in shaping the field of learning sciences. The journal embraces research on education and learning, viewing them as both theoretical and design sciences. Its mission is to provide a platform for innovative ideas that can significantly impact how we perceive and facilitate learning. The journal is published by Routledge and the current editors-in-chief are Leema Berland and Erica Halverson, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previous editors-in-chief include Susan Jurow, Jianwei Zhang, Susan A. Yoon, Jan van Aalst, Iris Tabak, Josh Radinsky, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, Yasmin Kafai, and founding editor emeritus Janet L.

Scope and Focus

JLS serves as a vital resource for researchers and educators interested in the science of learning. The journal's scope encompasses a wide array of topics, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the learning sciences. It delves into how people learn, what resources and supports enable learning, and how features of settings and contexts interact with the learning process.

The journal is particularly interested in knowledge, skills, and abilities that are not easily measured by conventional tests or signified by established credentials. Examples include knowledge of emerging scientific topics, skills in participating in scientific discussions, and the ability to collaborate to build knowledge. JLS is future-directed, encouraging exploration of how learners could develop in valuable but currently challenging ways. The journal also investigates the development of identity and social-emotional outcomes.

JLS emphasizes empirical studies and descriptive analyses of interaction in groups, investigating the emergence, development, and use of practices, processes, and mechanisms of collaborative learning. Discussions of technological supports, theoretical perspectives, assessment or evaluation designs, analysis methods, and pedagogical approaches related to collaborative learning are also welcome.

Key Themes and Research Areas

JLS covers a broad spectrum of research areas within the learning sciences, including:

Design-Based Research (DBR): JLS publishes research that utilizes design to study and improve learning environments. Design-based research involves the design of new ways to facilitate learning, studying whether issues in learning are constrained by existing resources or pedagogies, and whether new technologies or approaches might overcome these limits and advance learning.
Learning in Naturalistic Settings: JLS emphasizes studies conducted in real-world environments such as schools, museums, homes, and community centers, rather than highly controlled laboratories. This approach allows researchers to engage with the complexities of learning in realistic settings.
Subject Matter Specific Learning: A significant portion of JLS articles focuses on learning within specific subject areas, such as mathematics, science, or history. These studies examine constructs and processes that are important to the specific subject, rather than general issues of memory and attention. Topics include scientific inquiry, understanding difficult math concepts, disciplinary practices of argumentation and explanations, and learning subjects not ordinarily taught in schools, such as data science, nanoscience, or robotics.
Assessment of Learning: JLS publishes research on how to measure and assess student learning, particularly when the target knowledge or skill is important to measure and not easily captured by conventional tests.

Read also: Engaging Science Education
Technology-Enhanced Learning: JLS explores the intersection of technology and learning, emphasizing the importance of careful design and integration of technology into the learner's environment.
Collaborative Learning: Investigates how learning unfolds in the context of collaborative activity and how to design effective technological and pedagogical settings to support collaborative learning.
Modeling Learning Progressions: Addresses how to design learning environments, sequence instruction, and optimize feedback to support learners’ progress.
Simulations, Visualization, Modeling, and Representation: Explores the use of these tools to enhance learning.
Hands-on Activities: Examines the role of hands-on constructive activities in developing students’ identity as participants in challenging domains of expertise.

Read also: Planning Education Research

Methodological Approaches

JLS is open to a wide range of research methods, but it particularly favors studies that:

Capture Learning Processes Over Time: The journal emphasizes the importance of capturing details of how learning processes unfold over time, in interaction with people, materials, and settings. Methods such as video and audio records, system log data, and observation are commonly used.
Go Beyond Black Box Experiments: JLS encourages research that provides empirical documentation of how inputs contribute to outcomes, rather than only reporting inputs and outcomes.
Triangulate Data: The journal values self-reflections about a learning experience, but it emphasizes the need to move from insights to empirical accounts that can be verified by others.

JLS is less inclined towards large-scale survey methods or secondary analysis of existing data sets, as these methods tend to provide only snapshots in time.

Journal Metrics and Impact

The Journal of the Learning Sciences has consistently demonstrated its influence and prestige through various metrics. According to the 2020 Journal Citation Reports, its impact factor was 5.171. The 2021 Impact Factor is 6.083 and the 5-Year Impact Factor is 6.888. It was ranked 13/267 for Education and 6/61 for Educational Psychology. The acceptance rate in 2022 was 10%.

The journal's prestige is also reflected in its Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). These metrics provide additional insights into the journal's influence and impact within the broader scientific community.

The set of journals have been ranked according to their SJR and divided into four equal groups, four quartiles. The SJR is a size-independent prestige indicator that ranks journals by their 'average prestige per article'. It is based on the idea that 'all citations are not created equal'.

The chart shows the evolution of the average number of times documents published in a journal in the past two, three and four years have been cited in the current year.

Article Types and Submission Guidelines

JLS publishes several types of articles, including:

Research Articles: These are original empirical studies that contribute new knowledge to the field of learning sciences.
Theoretical Articles: These articles present new theories or frameworks for understanding learning.
Design Articles: These articles describe the design and evaluation of new learning environments, tools, or interventions.
Review Articles: These articles synthesize existing research on a particular topic in the learning sciences.
Reports and Reflections: Short articles of 4000 to 6000 words that aim to stir up debate and support the development of the field. These articles can help make connections to other fields, methodological papers, and many more topics.

JLS has specific guidelines for manuscript preparation, including adherence to the 7th edition of the APA style. Authors are also required to submit a structured abstract.

Resources for Authors and Reviewers

JLS provides resources for both authors and reviewers to ensure the quality and rigor of published research. These resources include:

Reviewer Guidelines: These guidelines provide information for reviewers on how to evaluate manuscripts submitted to JLS.
Manuscript Preparation Guidelines: These guidelines provide information for authors on how to prepare their manuscripts for submission to JLS.
Video Series on Reviewing: A video series featuring experienced learning scientists discussing their approach to reviewing, key issues in recommendations, and tips for new reviewers.
Resources on Writing Structured Abstracts: Information on the importance and effective use of structured abstracts.

Relationship to the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)

JLS is one of the two official journals of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). ISLS is a professional organization dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary research on learning. The ISLS hosts conferences, organizes journals, and provides ongoing forums that bring learning scientists together worldwide. ISLS members receive free access to the online digital versions of both JLS and the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

Other Journals of Interest in the Learning Sciences

Besides JLS and ijCSCL, several other journals contribute significantly to the field of learning sciences:

Cognition and Instruction: Considers problems in cognition and instruction, along with the evidence that would allow others to participate in the exercise of such imagination.
Computer-Based Learning In Context: Focuses on rigorous scientific research on computer-based learning in context, particularly how learners’ contexts impact their interactions.
Instructional Science: Promotes a deeper understanding of the nature, theory, and practice of the instructional process and resultant learning.
The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning (IJPBL): Offers a forum for problem-based learning research across disciplines.
Journal of AI in Education: Concerned with the application of artificial intelligence techniques and concepts to the design of systems to support learning.
Journal of Engineering Education: Serves as an archival record of scholarly research in engineering education.
Journal of Learning Analytics: Disseminates the highest quality research on the development and application of data science methods to better understand and support learning.
Mind, Culture, and Activity: Devoted to the study of the human mind in its cultural and historical contexts.

The Learning Sciences: A Broader Perspective

The Learning Sciences is a field of scientific research that developed in the 1980s, from influences which include cognitive science, computer science, information processing psychology, child development, anthropology, and linguistics. Whereas traditional educational research sometimes determines what to study by looking at education as an institution (e.g. with policies, practices, organizational structures, etc.), learning science research more often starts with a focus on learning: how do people learn, what resources and supports enable learning, and how do features of settings and contexts interact with the learning process. Also, whereas traditional educational research focuses primarily on students’ test scores or attainment of credentials, learning scientists are often concerned with knowledge, skills, and abilities that are not yet measured well by commonplace test scores nor yet signified by established credentials.

Learning scientists tend to be less enthusiastic about black box experiments, in which only inputs and outcomes are reported, with little empirical documentation of how the inputs contributed to the outcomes. Learning scientists want to go beyond only studying users’ perceptions of how much they enjoyed a particular learning experiences or found it useful, unless this data is triangulated with other data that tracks the quality of the learning process. Learning scientists also tend to be less involved in large-scale survey methods or secondary analysis of existing data sets, as these methods tend to only have snapshots in time. While learning scientists value self-reflections about a learning experience, they work to move from insights to empirical accounts, which can be more easily verified by others.

Learning Sciences research is particularly important as a key vector of cyberlearning investigations. The presence of a potentially transformative learning technology, alone, is not sufficient for a cyberlearning investigation. Rather, cyberlearning is realized through the interweaving of technology with learning science and other methods that illuminate processes of learning with theoretical depth and empirical precision. Learning scientists are looking for ways to add rigor both to the theoretical basis of design and the empirical claims about efficacy, especially as educational technology surges in the marketplace but often lacks depth in theory and rigor in empirical evidence. Learning sciences intersects with other emerging fields, such as learning analytics. Historically, learning sciences research has examined smaller populations of learners in great depth, often revealing insights that would not be apparent in larger populations and aggregate data. Learning sciences has had a healthy mix of public and policy engagement along with the mechanisms for growing a strong internal research community through a society, journals, conferences, and other efforts.

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