Socio-educational ecologies for learning, social change, and future thinking: Expanding educational psychology's boundaries

Abstract

Rapid societal and technological developments have transformed how people live and learn in and across different contexts, challenging the ways in which educational psychology has traditionally conceptualized and studied learning and development. These transformations are today exacerbated by the ongoing planetary crises of sustainability, structural inequalities, and threats to democracy, further challenging educational psychology's relevance for envisioning and realizing more socially just futures. In this paper, we argue that for educational psychology to remain relevant, responsive to, and responsible with regards to the societal challenges that we face, it is crucial that the boundaries of its domain of practice be expanded beyond classical notions of traditional schooling as the primary site of and model for learning. We argue for acknowledging, building on and extending cultural-historical and ecological approaches to design and investigate socio-educational ecologies connecting multiple learning settings. We argue that such ecosystems have the potential to support learning that also advances just and sustainable social futures

Part of this work has been funded by the Spanish Agency for Research (Agencia Estatal de Investigación), grant number RYC2021-034096-I