Nordic Research Network on Learning Across Contexts

The Nordic Research Network on Learning Across Contexts (NordLAC) is a co-operation in research and research training among six universities (Helsinki, Oslo, Gothenburg, Southern Denmark, Iceland, and Tartu) within the subject area of Learning Across Contexts. NordLAC aims to bring together researchers who share an interest in looking beyond research into one particular context for learning. The status of research on learning across contexts in the Nordic countries can be characterized as growing in interest, but at the same time fragmented in orientation.

Most of the participating research groups have received basic funding from national research councils. 20 senior scholars, about 10 post-docs, and around 40 PhD students are active in these groups; most of them take part in this Network. The aim is to cross-fertilize research and training initiatives across the participating groups and bring together different conceptual and methodological approaches in order to consolidate a Nordic research community on the interconnection between knowledge production and learning in different sites and contexts where children and young people participate. The aim is also to develop an international orientation showing research that is being done on these issues within and across the Nordic and Baltic countries. Concerning research training within this subject area in the Nordic countries, the Network will build on important initiatives during the last couple of years in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland. Our interest in issues of learning across contexts grows out of a broad set of influential studies from different disciplinary fields during the last decades.

However, a central problem remains: defining the limits and nature of a learning context. A key issue in this regard is what is particular to contexts that facilitate learning processes. This issue is addressed also with a view towards the increasing role played by mobility, due to the use of digital media, looking at movement and spatiality as they pertain to literacy research. Increased mobility of learning contexts challenges key questions about the role of time and scale as well as the idea of spatiality - online and offline. Behind many of these notions of context, time, scale, spatiality, people, things, and networks lie further assumptions about the interrelationship between individuals and society, and the role of education in the 21st Century.