By Laurel White
Two School of Education faculty members will serve as co-editors-in-chief of one of the most cited academic journals in education from 2025 through 2028.
Leema Berland and Erica Halverson, both professors in the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, will serve as co-editors-in-chief of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.
Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS) is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on teaching and learning. According to its website, JLS “provides a multidisciplinary forum for research on education and learning that informs theories of how people learn and the design of learning environments. It publishes research that elucidates processes of learning, and the ways in which technologies, instructional practices, and learning environments can be designed to support learning in different contexts.”
JLS is one of two journals affiliated with the International Society of the Learning Sciences, an interdisciplinary professional society for academics, professionals, and students interested in advancing the science and practice of learning.
Berland says she and Halverson share a vision of the field of the learning sciences being focused on several core principles:
- The learning sciences is fundamentally concerned with what it means to know and to learn;
- Knowing and learning have cognitive, developmental, social, cultural, historical, and political features;
- We can leverage our understanding of knowing and learning to collaboratively design learning environments that facilitate individuals’ and communities’ movement towards their goals;
- Improving peoples’ lives is an act of equity and social justice that must be done with care and attention to people who have been excluded from institutional conversations.
“We are excited to collaborate with one another, the former co-editors-in-chief, the associate editors, and the editorial board to publish articles representing the multitude of ways that these principles are realized across our diverse field,” Berland says.
Ahead of their tenure as co-editors-in-chief, Berland and Halverson served as associate editors of the journal. Notably, Halverson co-authored one of the journal’s most cited articles, “Learning in and through the arts,” in 2022.
In her own research, Berland focuses on facilitating and studying students as they engage in sensemaking practices. In particular, she examines K-12 students’ sensemaking about scientific phenomena, teacher candidates’ sensemaking about pedagogical phenomena, and educators making sense of their shared anti-racist vision and goals.
Halverson’s research is centered upon how people learn in and through the arts across a range of art forms, with a focus on the performing arts. She also runs Whoopensocker, an artist-in-residence program in Madison Public Schools, and is the host of the popular podcast, “Arts Educators Save the World.”