Introduction to Vol. 12 No. 4 (2024)
2025-02-07
Dear reader,
I hope this message finds you in good health and prospering with the onset of a new year. It gives me great pleasure to announce that a new issue of Frontline Learning Research, number four in 2024, was recently published. The issue comprises five articles that between contribute innovatively to the conceptual and empirical investigation of learning communities, equitable practice, self-regulation environments, well-being, and digital citizenship, for teachers and learners alike.
Vermeire and colleagues investigate how online, informal learning communities should be conceptualized, given present-day platformised online spaces. They analysed six communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok, starting from the notion of “affinity spaces”, originally put forward by Gee. The authors found that this concept needs reconsideration to be adequately applicable to online communities, as they are mediated in platformised spaces. Thus, visibility regimes of access, hierarchization, and interests of platform cultures must be taken into account in a different way than before. The authors propose the term “platformised affinity space” to account for the dynamics of these spaces.
The article by Davis and colleagues presents a theoretical argument for a holistic framework that integrates learning goals and goals of improving diversity, equity, inclusivity and justice. The theoretical argument is informed by the authors’ experience with a comprehensive change initiative which therefore also serves as empirical illustration of the framework. A significant feature of the framework is that it promotes change activity in the classroom, interrelated with work to create an inclusive climate at the departmental/organizational level. Thus, it provides guidance to practitioners, policy makers and leaders working towards equitable, consequential learning in inclusive climates.
Mejeh and colleagues conducted an exploratory study of how teaching quality criteria can be used to assess the quality of a learning environment focused on promoting self-regulated learning. Building on work by Klieme and colleagues, they focus on three basic dimensions of teaching quality: classroom management, cognitive activation and student support. The authors conducted seven focus group interviews with secondary school students to investigate student perspectives on the self-regulated learning environment, and, more specifically, what aspects of the three basic dimensions of teaching quality the students describe as significant in the self-regulated learning environment.
Krummenacher and colleagues report on a qualitative study exploring the apparent paradox that teaching on the one hand requires managing multiple professional challenges and that teachers on the other hand tend to report a medium to high level of well-being. The authors conducted interviews with 29 teachers of compulsory schooling. The interviews focused on identifying the strategies used by teachers in dealing with professional challenges. The study identified relational problem-solving as a commonly used strategy. The results of the study have important implications for understanding what promotes teachers’ resilience and well-being and actively supporting this with interventions.
In the article by Consoli, the author investigates how students’ online civic engagement and online respectful behavior relate to different types of media education practices in Swiss upper secondary schools. The study draws on a national survey of 8915 students. Findings show that current practices focus primarily on protective media education approaches rather than on educating for digital citizenship. Further, the findings indicate that digital citizenship education is challenged when it comes to simultaneously encouraging civic engagement and respectful behavior. The aim to integrate these two foci may be more prescriptive than empirical, as different digital citizenship profiles appear to exist.
Kind regards,
Professor, Dr. Nina Bonderup Dohn
Editor-in-Chief, Frontline Learning Research