A Note From the Editor

Abstract

The affiliation of The Journal of the Learning Sciences(JLS) with the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) is providing this journal with many benefits. JLShas additional subscribers as ISLS gains members (and ISLS gains members through the journal, so it is a productive two-way relationship), and there are more people reading the journal. We are also getting more submissions from outside of North America. The journal has been quite rich in submissions from North America and Israel over the past 5 years, but we have published very few articles from researchers outside of those places. In the past 2 years, since affiliating with ISLS, JLS is beginning to get more submissions from Europe, Asia, and Australia. In this volume of the journal, you will begin to see those articles being published.

We are, however, interested in bringing even more international participation into JLS, and we will continue to work toward that goal over the coming year and beyond. One of our colleagues, C.K. Cheung, from the University of HongKong, has done an analysis of international representation inJLS, and we have asked him to refine it as a commentary for the journal. His commentary will appear in Issue 4 of this volume. He points out the lack of international participation and suggests some reasons for it. Our editorial leadership group (Editor in Chief, associate editors, and strand editors) will jointly author a response in which we attempt to clarify what we think are the reasons for the disparity and suggest some ways of bringing in a more international presence. In the meantime, we want our colleagues outside of North America to remember that JLSis a venue for publishing your work.

Affiliation with ISLS brings another benefit—better access to the community of learning scientists, allowing us a broader set of people to choose from as reviewers, editorial board members, and associate editors. Rogers Hall has completed his term as an associate editor, except for finishing up acting on manuscripts he has been working on up to now; and Yasmin Kafai is taking a year off from new assignments while she serves as President of the ISLS. I am delighted to introduce you to three new associate editors: David Hammer, from the University of Maryland; Jeremy Roschelle, from SRI International; and Iris Tabak, from Ben Gurion University in Israel. Between them, they bring expertise in cognitive, sociocognitive, and cultural approaches to learning; design experiments as well as qualitative and quantitative analysis; research on teaching and teacher thinking; design of learning environments and all that entails; and integration of nontraditional technologies to the classroom. Thank you to Rogers. Welcome David, Jeremy, and Iris.

One more opportunity that affiliation brings is access to reviewers. Now that we have away for reviewers to enter information about their expertise and interests, we will soon be sending out an e-mail to all ISLS members asking who wants to review JLSsubmissions. We believe that this is an exciting opportunity to stay current with the latest works while contributing to the growth of our shared community.

We continue to have questions about our strands and special issues, so I want to take this opportunity to explain again what they are. A strand in JLSallows us to publish articles that address important themes, explicitly building ongoing critical dialogue as new articles advance on what was contributed in previous strand manuscripts. We hope Strands will stimulate research in important areas.

We currently have three ongoing strands. Our “Design Studies” strand focuses on methodological issues in setting up and analyzing results of design studies and design experiments. Sasha Barab is editor for this strand. Our “Transfer” strand publishes articles that go beyond traditional approaches to transfer as a phenomenon and looks at processes that go into preparing for and accomplishing transfer—cognitive processes, interactions, and acts of participation—and methodological issues for studying cognitive and social issues in preparing for accomplishment of transfer. Joanne Lobato edits this strand. Our final strand is on learning about complex causal systems and is edited by Cindy Hmelo-Silver and Michael Jacobson. In this strand, authors report on how we help learners learn about systems with multiple interdependent levels and heterogenous parts. (The journal will also accept submissions about viewing learning environments as complex systems, but those will not necessarily go into this strand.) Articles submitted for strands are reviewed the same way other articles are reviewed, and two decisions are made—Is this article appropriate for the journal, and is it appropriate for the strand? If it is appropriate for the strand, we give authors advice about how to tie it to other articles in the strand. If it is appropriate for the journal but not the strand, we treat it as a regular submission.

We are being conservative in planning for special issues, as there is not a lot of room in the journal, but we will begin to publish special issues again in 2008. Look out for an announcement of a special issue on games and learning, a growing area of research in the learning sciences. If you have an idea for a special issue, submit your idea through the online system (http://www.editorialmanager.com/jls). Some special issues will lend themselves to invited articles; others we will want to open up to the community. Our editorial leadership group is taking charge of making those decisions. We will usually have guest editors help write a Call for Papers and an introduction, ask them to ask peers to submit contributions, and involve them in choosing a coherent set of articles for a special issue from those submitted that are accepted for the journal, but the first round of reviewing for special issue submissions will be through the regular review process.

The editorial leadership has been discussing several other issues, and I will be happy to entertain your opinions on those. The biggest of these is the possibility of setting up an online system for discussion of articles. We are currently talking to the publications committee of the ISLS for help with this endeavor. If anybody wants to get involved, let me know. Once we have an online system, we will have more leeway in considering other issues. For example, do we want to add an issues or opinions section? If we do, do we want it online or on paper? How should we continue the Books and Ideas column? Shall we continue with interviews of authors who have written interesting new books, as we have been doing for the past year, or shall we go back to asking for commentary on different books or issues as Tim Koschmann organized for us for many years, or shall we organize the section some other way? Should we make room for short articles about systems in addition to the long articles that we traditionally publish?

The associate and strand editors join me in wishing everyone a productive new year. Please do send me your ideas and opinions.