In addition to our general issue, which has open submissions throughout the year, Continuity in Education also publishes themed special collections. If you would like to submit to any of your forthcoming collections, please follow the instructions in the below open calls.
Accepted manuscripts will be published during 2023-2025.
Unless stated otherwise, the following applies to all collections:
- This will be a Special Collection of Continuity in Education. The journal publishes online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Special Collections papers will appear as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.
- Continuity in Education publishes the following types of articles: Research articles: 8000 words, Practice and intervention: 8000 words, Theoretical/methodological: 6000 words. Brief Reports on ongoing works are also accepted (2500 to 4000 Words).
- Further authors guidelines can be found on our Submissions page. Author are encouraged to make use of our templates when writing their papers.
- Articles will be peer reviewed according to the journal's review policies, and notifications sent of submission acceptance.
- Upon final acceptance manuscripts will be published as open access under a CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- There is no cost for publication.
Empowering human connections
Co-editors: Sandra Russ (swr@case.edu) & Meirav Hen (meiravhen2@gmail.com).
Recently the world happiness report found that people who experience connectedness with others have greater life satisfaction, more resilience and better mental health. This aspect is crucially important for children who are forced into relative social distancing whilst isolated due to a medical or mental health condition. Either at home or in the hospital, they are torn from their everyday routines, losing contact with family, as well as friends, often experiencing pain, anxiety, and loneliness. By creating human connectedness with these students, we help them develop bonds which convey a sense of belonging that allows them to feel seen and valued even when their medical or mental condition requires keeping a distance from others or may impinge on their physical, social, cognitive, or emotional functioning.
The true challenge for educators working with children who have a medical or mental condition, whether they are studying at home, in the hospital, or in the classroom, is to help students make a sense of what is happening around them. Therefore, there is a need to reconstruct their social and growth-related fabric and to keep their process of development going despite isolation. A good connectedness at a child's level can only be reached if the same is guaranteed at the teacher’s level. Thus, it is crucial to create communication between different school settings, plan and work collaboratively, establish shared evaluation criteria, and share common key values to promote the child’s education.
When working with ill children and adolescents we have many opportunities to connect with them in meaningful ways, help them stay connected with themselves and others, and increase their awareness of the value and power of human connectedness and belonging.
Manuscripts are invited on activities or studies supporting human connectedness and the sense of belonging practiced in your educational environment, individually, in groups, digitally or face to face, by expressive and communication tools. We welcome studies and practices that report on connectedness realized at the student’s or the teacher’s level, between or with distant or diverse communities and contexts, or with a distant or culturally segregated historic heritage.
Using the school for healthcare delivery
Co-editors: Mary Kay Irwin (MaryKay.Irwin@nationwidechildrens.org), Daniel Skinner (skinnerd@ohio.edu)
Physically and emotionally healthy children are more likely to achieve academic success as they experience fewer school absences and are better able to focus and learn while in school. Students who regularly attend school earn higher grades, score higher on standardized tests, and are more likely to graduate school as scheduled. Promising outcomes associated with robust school health partnerships have garnered support from governmental agencies, philanthropic funders, professional organizations, and other stakeholders interested in leveraging integrated systems of school-based care to address critical disparities among youth. Given the inextricable link between health and education, school-based health partnerships establish a level of continuity unable to be achieved independently by either the healthcare or education systems alone.
Frameworks such as the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and the Whole School Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) are often leveraged as the structure for alignment of shared priorities. These frameworks set the stage for meaningful partnerships that can remove nonacademic barriers and ensure that students are in school, healthy and ready to learn. Successful school health partnerships take on many shapes and forms, and include primary care clinics inside schools, mobile vans providing dental or vision care in school parking lots, telehealth services in partnership with school nurses, behavioral health clinicians providing therapy in school, prevention programs and services (e.g., whole school/grade mental health prevention programs, sexually transmitted infection prevention education and testing services) and more.
For providers: What type of healthcare services do you offer in schools? How do you deliver healthcare services in schools (onsite clinic, mobile unit, telehealth)? Can you share your perspective relative to barriers and facilitators for school-based healthcare delivery? Have you evaluated your program/services and what have you learned from the results? How have you leveraged partnerships with schools to achieve continuity of care in addressing health inequities or to develop an integrated approach to care? What policy barriers, opportunities, or developments should interested stakeholders be aware of? What recommendations do you have related to policy development? How does your school-based healthcare model align with the Social Determinants of Health framework?
For schools: Do you have partnerships with outside healthcare entities? If so, who are your partners? What type of care do they provide? How do healthcare services in schools help students and communities? Can you share your perspective relative to barriers and facilitators for school-based healthcare delivery? Have you evaluated your program/services and what have you learned from the results? How can healthcare services in schools improve education-related outcomes? What policy barriers, opportunities or developments should interested stakeholders be aware of? What recommendations do you have related to policy development? How does your school-based healthcare model align with the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child framework?
Manuscripts are invited on activities, studies, and policy developments related to well-coordinated, integrated systems of school-based care. It is our intention to draw authors and researchers from many different disciplines. Interested authors may email marykay.irwin@nationwidechildrens.org to seek advice on manuscript ideas prior to submission.
Subject based teaching and projects in Home and Hospital Education
Co-editors: Richard Winder (RWinder@nhs.school.nz) & Fergal McNamara (fergal.hope@gmail.com)
The education of children with medical and mental health needs is often provided for by schools and teachers in hospitals or in the home. These are unique educational settings that present challenges both to the teachers and the students involved. Different school subjects will also have specific limitations and challenges associated with the hospital or home context.
How are your schools and services addressing these challenges? How do you adapt your lessons and projects to tackle the challenges presented by specific subjects? What type of learning tools and resources are your schools using? How do you ensure students are involved as active learners and not just the passive recipients of condensed curriculum-related content? How do teachers communicate and collaborate effectively with their colleagues who might be from different schools and contexts? How do they collaborate in different subject areas and age groups? Can your experience and practice at home or in a hospital involving children dealing with medical or mental health care needs be extended to the wider community?
If you have any subject-specific methodologies or projects that demonstrate effective practice to share, Continuity in Education is open to receiving papers on these topics, and the papers will be published given the highest priority.
Manuscripts are invited on activities or studies supporting continuity in school and the development of young people with medical or mental health needs facing disruptions in their education. We are particularly interested in papers that focus on the provision of specific school subjects. It is our intention to draw authors and researchers from many different disciplines.