EERJ Aims and Scope
The European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) publishes peer-reviewed research articles and special issues that make a clear, original, and significant contribution to educational research in relation to Europe and related educational dynamics. Submissions may engage with Europe as an empirical setting, a comparative frame, a policy arena, a historical formation, or a conceptual problem space, and should foster research and scholarly dialogue of international relevance.
The journal welcomes scholarship across the full breadth of educational inquiry, including formal and informal education, schooling, vocational education and training, higher education, adult and continuing education, lifelong learning, teacher education, curriculum, pedagogy, policy, governance, and related fields. EERJ publishes empirical, historical, philosophical, conceptual, comparative, and methodological work, and welcomes contributions that illuminate questions, processes, and problem formations of significance for education within and beyond Europe.
The considerations outlined below indicate the journal’s areas of interest and the qualities it values in strong submissions. Committed to disciplinary pluralism, EERJ welcomes diverse epistemological and methodological approaches, provided they demonstrate scholarly rigour, originality, and clear relevance to educational research in relation to Europe.
EERJ particularly values submissions that combine substantive educational relevance with theoretical ambition, methodological rigour, and reflexive awareness of how educational knowledge, institutions, and problems are produced, circulated, and contested. Manuscripts may focus on a specific national or sub-national context within Europe, on transnational or comparative frames, or on the constitution of Europe itself; in each case, the journal looks for clear articulation of the work’s wider significance for European educational research and for debates shaped by regional, transnational, and global dynamics and interdependencies.
The journal encourages submissions that expand and challenge established understandings of Europe and education by engaging with overlooked regions, underrepresented perspectives, peripheral standpoints, and emerging lines of inquiry. This includes work by early-career researchers and scholars contributing from different linguistic, geographical, and intellectual traditions.
EERJ is attentive to how education is being reshaped by major contemporary societal and educational changes, and welcomes scholarship that critically engages with them. Such work may address a wide range of issues - including democratic and geopolitical pressures, the rise of populism and other internal and external challenges to Europe itself, changing governance arrangements, inequality, mobility and displacement, digitalisation and datafication, the growing role of non-state actors, colonial and postcolonial entanglements, climate-related challenges, and the changing conditions of educational research itself. These examples indicate important directions of inquiry but do not limit the journal's remit; it is the scientific quality and significance of the contribution that matters.
EERJ is interested in submissions that:
- offer a clear, original, and analytically grounded contribution to educational research;
- engage with Europe explicitly as an empirical setting, a comparative frame, a policy arena, a historical trajectory, or a conceptual problem space;
- demonstrate strong theoretical, conceptual, and/or methodological development;
- situate their case, data, or argument within a wider transnational, comparative, or European context;
- connect meaningfully with broader debates in educational research and with questions relevant to education in national, regional and global contexts.
EERJ is not interested in submissions that:
- offer limited originality or analytical contribution and remain largely descriptive;
- treat Europe as incidental or merely contextual rather than integral to the argument;
- show weak or insufficient theoretical, conceptual, or methodological grounding;
- focus on a single case or setting without clarifying its broader relevance for education within or beyond Europe;
- are better suited to a generalist education journal than to a journal focused on educational re-search in relation to Europe.
EERJ Moots during ECER
2024:
The age of the Teacherbot: Artificial Intelligence as the new educational disruption
2023:
Is the Time for Green Education in Europe?
2019:
Education and the Return of the Nation: Nationalism in the era of Global Education Policies
2018:
The European Education Area 2025: vision, ambition, construction?
2017:
The EU's Four Freedoms: moving people, capital, goods and services across the field of European education
2016:
The Digital Life of Educational Researchers #newexpectations #followme @ECER
2015:
We need to talk about Europe! Amplifying the voices of refugees
2014:
What is yet to come? A ‘Moot’ addressing the future of European educational research
2013:
A Moot for Educational Research in Europe?
2012:
Research Impact and Educational Research
2011:
Education Research and Useful Knowledge - Production, Dissemination, Reception, Implementation
2010:
Education Research in New Contexts – submerged, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary
2009:
Researcher Mobility in Europe
2008:
The European Research-Intensive University
More information
Find more information on the EERJ Hompage and in the journals submission guidelines.
EERJ Lead Editors
Kirsten Sivesind - University of Oslo, Norway
