Cogent Education

Idiodynamic Studies in Education

Cogent Education is pleased to welcome you to submit your research to the Article Collection "Idiodynamic Studies in Education".

This Article Collection explores the dynamic experiences of individuals, including both students and teachers, in various educational contexts. Drawing on idiodynamic research perspectives, which emphasize the changeable, dynamic, and temporal states that people experience within situated events, the Collection embraces the symbiotic nature of teaching and learning with an emphasis on moment-to-moment experiences in educational contexts. The Collection illustrates how students have diverse experiences despite being exposed to the same disciplinary content, how these experiences change within the timeframe of single events, and considers what findings mean for education. Whereas much previous educational research has relied on static measures that elicit data post-hoc (i.e., after the event), idiodynamic studies allow researchers access to ongoing (i.e., as it is happening) educational experiences, thereby elucidating learning and teaching in new ways. Such perspectives are relevant in all types of learning and teaching, and particularly valuable when second/additional languages (L2s) are used in educational contexts by students or teachers or both, as they can trace emotional, attentional, and cognitive changes during classroom events.

Idiodynamic methods involving real-time data collection related to student experiences have been gaining momentum in educational research, as they allow for moment-to-moment monitoring of various constructs that impact both student learning and instructor approaches and strategies; for example, emotion, lecture comprehension, task design and execution, and willingness to communicate. These methods allow access to previously-inaccessible data points, overcoming limitations in previous research such as time-delay and overly-generalized claims. Idiodynamics offers data that is intimately tied to second-by-second educational experiences, often in real classroom settings, thereby providing ecological validity not present in strictly controlled studies. These methods have scope for quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods studies and are centered on learning and/or instructional processes, capturing data in-situ during ongoing classroom work. New technologies, including heart rate monitors, galvanic skin response (GSR) units, rating software, and time-stamp mechanisms, among others, now offer access to previously-inaccessible continuous monitoring of student and teacher experiences in “live” situations, avoiding post-hoc problems and generating tangible real-time data.

This Article Collection highlights the impactful insights that idiodynamics can provide, building on momentum established by early efforts in the fields of applied linguistics, education, and second language (L2) acquisition. Highlighting the crucial role language plays in both L2 and content learning, the Article Collection is broad in scope, allowing for various forms of idiodynamic data and related analysis methods. The range of constructs to be investigated (e.g., emotions, engagement, comprehension, etc.) invites a rich and diverse coverage of classroom events as experienced by various classroom actors. The Collection makes a valuable contribution to educational and applied linguistic research and further advances research methodology by showcasing novel technological approaches to collecting classroom data in real time and analyzing it from idiodynamic perspectives, which involve accounting for the complex, dynamic and individual experiences of students and instructors.

We welcome original research articles involving idiodynamic research in education on topics including but not limited to the following are welcome:

• Emotions and affect
• Attention
• Comprehension
• Motivation
• Task performance
• Reflection
• Students
• Teachers
• Language of instruction
• Multimodality
• Receptive and/or productive skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary, etc.)

Meet the Guest Advisors

Dr. Joseph Siegel is Professor in English with a focus on second language pedagogy and teacher education at Stockholm University in Sweden, where he teaches TESOL methodology, linguistics, and applied linguistic research methods courses. He holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Aston University and currently leads the ReMoDEL project, funded by the Swedish Research Council.

The Guest Advisors declare no conflict of interest regarding this work.