Call for Papers: English Monothematic Issue 2027 Learning in Times of Polycrisis: Education, Life Skills, and Social Resilience

Climate change, pandemics, wars, forced displacement, economic instability, and technological changes shape the conditions of everyday life. The concept of polycrisis draws attention to these interdependencies, feedback loops, and cumulative consequences (Lawrence et al., 2024; Dadvand, 2026). Polycrisis situations also reshape how and where people learn. When institutions fail to provide stable or adequate responses, individuals and communities develop their own ways of acquiring knowledge and organising support. Learning outside formal curricula – in families, peer groups, workplaces, and digital communities, etc. – becomes particularly important. Such learning can foster agency, cooperation, and the capacity for collective action, and yet it often remains institutionally invisible and socially unrecognised (DeJaeghere & Murphy-Graham, 2022; UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2020). Research on life skills interventions also points to the importance of participant involvement, safe learning environments, and anchoring change in everyday life (Aromatario et al., 2026).

This special issue seeks to advance interdisciplinary discussion of how individuals, communities, and institutions learn amid intersecting crises: which life skills they develop and how formal, non-formal, and informal education contributes to – or undermines – social resilience. Social resilience is not perceived as a self-evident educational outcome or an individual trait. Instead it is a relational, community-based, and institutional process shaped by access to resources, support networks, and opportunities to participate in decision making (DeJaeghere & Murphy-Graham, 2022; Masten & Motti-Stefanidi, 2020).

 

The special issue is organised around four interconnected themes:

• Learning through Crisis – learning through experiences of crisis, as people develop practical knowledge, moral judgment, solidarity, self-organisation, and the capacity to act. At the same time, this special issue critically examines what counts as a “crisis”, who defines it as such, and how crises are experienced and learned from differently across social groups.
• Invisible Life Skills Education – the development of life skills beyond formal curricula and the challenges involved in recognising, studying, and validating such learning. Life skills are approached not simply as measurable individual competencies but as situated, relational, embodied, and often collective capacities. This special issue also asks which knowledge and competence remain educationally invisible, whose knowledge is recognised or marginalised, and how individual learning may become collective capacity for living through polycrisis situations.
• Pedagogy of Preparedness – learning to act under conditions of uncertainty through critical thinking, cooperation, care, anticipation, and readiness for social disruption. The theme therefore critically examines resilience itself: when does education enable people and communities to transform the conditions producing vulnerability, and when does it merely prepare individuals to endure them?
• Unlearning Certainty – questioning established assumptions, routines, and interpretive frameworks that become inadequate in times of crisis and developing new ways of understanding changing social realities. This theme encompasses contested expertise, misinformation and AI-mediated knowledge, and trust in both institutions and research. Unlearning certainty involves developing the capacity to navigate ambiguity, revise interpretations, and act responsibly without complete knowledge.

 

We welcome submissions addressing topics that include, but are not limited to:

• informal and non-formal learning ecosystems and their relationships with formal education;
• the role of education in imagining and shaping shared futures;
• the development of life skills amid disruptions to everyday life and prolonged uncertainty;
• relationships among individual, community, and institutional resilience;
• learning solidarity, cooperation, care, trust, democratic participation and self-organisation;
• learning and preparedness for uncertain and changing conditions;
• inequalities in access to resources that support learning and adaptation;
• the educational roles of civil society organisations, families, workplaces, communities, peer networks, and digital spaces;
• the recognition and validation of invisible, tacit, or unacknowledged learning;
• methodological approaches to studying situated, distributed, and embodied knowledge;
• conceptual, methodological, and assessment approaches for assessing life skills and social resilience, including the limits of their measurement and validation;
• ethical and participatory research with people and communities experiencing crisis, disruption, displacement, or prolonged uncertainty.

 

The special issue examines how polycrisis situations reshape learning and responses to uncertainty. It examines learning that emerges in disrupted everyday life and its role in developing life skills and social resilience. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which resilience is shaped by social and institutional conditions, including inequalities in resources and responsibility. The issue explores the potential of learning to support both adaptation and social transformation.

Contributions may also examine how the language of resilience shifts responsibility for structural problems from governments and institutions to individuals and communities. Questions of power, inequality, recognition, and the social costs of adaptation are therefore central to the proposed issue.

We invite submissions from scholars in education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, and other fields across the social sciences and humanities. We welcome theoretical and conceptual papers, empirical studies using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, and methodological contributions, including the development of new research approaches and tools. Each submission should clearly identify the educational or socio-educational dimension of the issue under examination.

 

Submission Guidelines:

• By 30 November 2026, send abstracts in the range of max. 2 pages (3,600 characters) to the email address pedagogika@pedf.cuni.cz with the note "English mono 2027". In the abstract, please state: the author(s) and title of the paper, its type (theoretical, overview, methodological, research study), the expected scope, and the aim and content of the paper.
• By 31 December 2026 at the latest, the authors will be notified of the next steps.
• Studies based on accepted abstracts should be submitted by the end of April 2027. Subsequently, the studies will go through a standard review procedure and the authors will be asked to modify their texts.
• Submissions may include original research, literature reviews, case studies, or theoretical papers.
• Submissions will undergo a standard double-blind peer review process.

 

Important Dates:

• Submission call opened
• Abstract submission deadline: 30 November 2026
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 31 December 2026
• Final Manuscript Due: 30 April 2027
• Publication Date: until the end of 2027

 

Guest Editors:

Jana Poláchová Vašťatková, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Paweł Rudnicki, DSW University, Poland

 

References

Aromatario, O., Velardo, F., Martel, E., Couralet, D., Cambon, L., & Martin-Fernandez, J. (2026). Improving personal, social, and life skills in adolescents: A scoping review of key components in interventions. Journal of Public Health, 34, 197–205.

Dadvand, B. (2026). Rethinking critical pedagogy in times of polycrisis: towards a generative praxis of entanglement, complicity and hope. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–14.

DeJaeghere, J., & Murphy-Graham, E. (Eds.). (2022). Life skills education for youth: Critical perspectives. Springer.

European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. (2023). Transformational education in poly-crisis. Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2777/98947

Lawrence, M., Homer-Dixon, T., Janzwood, S., Rockström, J., Renn, O., & Donges, J. F. (2024). Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement. Global Sustainability, 7, e6.

Masten, A. S., & Motti-Stefanidi, F. (2020). Multisystem resilience for children and youth in disaster: Reflections in the context of COVID-19. Adversity and Resilience Science, 1, 95–106.

Ruiz-Mallén, I., Satorras, M., March, H., & Baró, F. (2022). Community climate resilience and environmental education: Opportunities and challenges for transformative learning. Environmental Education Research, 28(7), 1088–1107.

UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. (2020). Embracing a culture of lifelong learning: Contribution to the Futures of Education initiative. UNESCO.