P. Robert-Jan Simons – författare

Although educational research advocates the perspective of the learner, who or what is it advocating against? The governments of all European Union countries give learning the most prominent place on their policy agendas; the European Commission wants Europe to become a knowledge based society; companies across the European Union are no longer interested primarily in profit, but want to be learning organisations; social scientists detect the emergence of a learning society and economists advocate a learning economy. What does European educational research do, if nowadays everybody in the European Union wants nothing else but knowledgeable people?

In view of the present attempts to broaden the scope of educational research as far as learning is concerned, there has been increased interest in the functional environment of the learner. Since this environment includes psychological, pedagogical, sociological and even cultural-anthropological variables, the term learning environment is more often used. Traditionally this environment has consisted of the teacher and students in a situation similar to the real context, for instance in an apprenticeship. Although the apprenticeship form of learning has almost disappeared in Western educational systems, its characteristics can now be designed within intelligent learning environments that have the computation and storage capacity of modern technological innovations. The different perspectives regarding learning environments have been bundled into this book in an overview of Dutch and German research. These perspectives pertain to various system levels (learning activities, class- room and school) and to various disciplinary views (pedagogical, psychological, sociological).