1/2025 - Call for paper

2024-09-16

Focus

The first issue of 2025 is dedicated to transformative processes and innovative teaching practices implemented in higher education contexts for the development of a collective culture of sustainability.

Re-generating higher education contexts in the name of culture for sustainability implies starting from the assumption that transformations are never easy, but rather disorienting. They require consciously and critically analyzing the relationships between current practices and current problems, to be able to deconstruct them and identify transformations and solutions for a sustainable environmental and social future. It is necessary to highlight that a sustainability-oriented transformation is a journey that takes place in a dual direction: one inward, through critical reflection on actions and practices that are now rooted and no longer increasingly responsive to current problems. It leads to rethinking curricula and teaching/learning practices, to the development of new skills and new students’ and teachers’ mindsets, the adoption of new governance strategies and policies; another outward, aimed at seeking dialogue and collective involvement to promote new awareness and find sustainable solutions.

The contributions presented need to respond to the current challenges of global society to which higher education systems are called upon to respond. They are linked to environmental, social, educational, and training sustainability themes. The need to contribute to the development of a sustainable future born from real problems urges scholars to develop research that can promote reflection and research, think of transformative actions through the integration of a new cultural and pedagogical mindset in the name of sustainability in Higher Education contexts.

The call intends to ask some useful questions for the presentation of contributions: How can Higher Education transform itself and what dimensions and processes can it rethink internally? What would this transformation entail? What governance strategies could higher education systems adopt to regenerate and respond to current needs? How could this transformation generate a positive impact on the broader community and organizations and drive meaningful and sustainable change? What skills should students and teachers have to generate a culture of/for sustainability?

It is not always possible to guarantee everyone's publication in the issue related to the call in which they participated - even with positive refereeing. Contributions that do not accede to immediate publication, with the consent of the authors will become part of the Excellence and Innovation in Learning and Teaching (EILT) archive and will be published in subsequent issues. Those who wish to withdraw their contributions, please notify the Editorial Office in a timely manner.

General information

The journal Excellence and Innovation in Learning and Teaching (EILT) fits in with a wide scientific multidisciplinary debate, which deepens teaching and learning practices in the context of higher education as well as of university-business dialogue, with a focus also on teaching support services and educational and training processes.

The journal aims to build a dialogue on national and international excellence in teaching and learning and to be in the education and training landscape as a strategic resource for teachers and professionals.

The main topics of interest are:

teaching and learning quality and excellence
curriculum design and development
teaching and learning methods
assessment and evaluation
pedagogical processes’ leadership and management in educational and training contexts
lifelong learning methodologies and tools.

Authors are asked to present national and international contributions in the following formats:

Refereed articles (peer-reviewed): conceptual papers of 4000-5500 words including tables, graphs, and references.
Refereed research (peer-reviewed): empirical research of 4000-5500 words including tables, graphs, and references.
Experiences and practices (peer-reviewed): experiences, practices, and projects’ reports, 3000-4500 words including tables, graphs, and references.

All the proposed manuscripts must comply with the journal formatting guidelines (you can find them at the “author guidelines” link) and with APA7 style.

The journal Excellence and Innovation in Learning and Teaching is aimed at school and university teachers, but also to educators, trainers, and experts in human resources management and development.

Please notice: For scientific journals to be classified as Class A, they need to have a substantial number (i.e. the majority) of authors among the structured scholars affiliated with Italian or foreign universities or research institutions. To clarify, the authors must be recognized as scholars of distinction within the relevant scientific communities. This contributes to the journal’s manifestation of openness and pluralism due to the diversity of its published authors (ANVUR, 2019).