Due: April 15

JLS is excited to solicit abstracts for consideration for a special issue of The Journal of the Learning Sciences titled “Learning in and through the arts.” The goal of this special issue is to develop and explore synergistic links between arts education and the learning sciences.

• All arts disciplines are welcomed: visual, musical, dance, performance, composition, etc.
• Papers should focus on artistic creation rather than reception or perception
• Papers can take any theoretical and empirical stance
• Papers can use any methodology, but must use a rigorous, theoretically-grounded methodology
• Papers can study any learning environment, in-school but also, for example, private lessons, bands, summer camps, museums, maker spaces, citizen art
  Papers can incorporate studies of technologies and artistic creation, but should emphasize generalizable findings about learning, rather than the features of the technology per se
• We prefer empirical studies that report new findings from new data gathered using rigorous methodologies. However, theoretical articles may be considered. We do not encourage the submission of literature reviews, or of programmatic articles that comment on past research, the current state of the field, or recommendations for future paths forward.

All submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the two co-editors, who will then invite a selection of the abstracts to be developed and submitted as full papers. Papers will then go through the standard JLS peer review process. We anticipate that the special issue will have four or five articles, each of a maximum of 9,000 words including references.

Abstract submissions should be between 500 and 800 words, and have the following structure: 1) Statement of the research question and the research goal; 2) Statement of the potential contribution to scholarship, along with a description of the specific area of scholarship that the paper is situated in. 3) A brief summary of where the literature review will focus. 4) A brief description of the theoretical framework used to explain findings. 5) A brief description of the methodology used, and the data to be analyzed and discussed. 6) A brief summary of the findings that will be reported.
Authors who are invited to submit manuscripts will have four months to complete and submit the manuscript. Because of this tight timeline, authors should already have gathered data and should already have findings ready to report before preparing and submitting their abstract.

Please submit abstracts to Erica Halverson (erica.halverson@wisc.edu) with the subject line JLS Special Issue Abstract Submission by Wednesday April 15th. If you are invited to submit a full paper, you will be notified by May 15th and manuscripts will be due by September 15th.