Considering urgent complex and cross-cutting societal challenges such as demographic shifts, sustainability transitions, and innovation in public services there is a need for change in higher education. One could argue that students today experience a growing pressure from the surroundings for agency, interdisciplinary competence, and motivation to engage in real-world challenges, whereas the pedagogies widely activated are lagging behind in terms of supporting students to combine such “will to act” with a “competence to act”.

This special issue addresses how students can be empowered to contribute to meaningful social transformation through different kinds of knowledge systems and actor networks that support the transition from student agency to impact. The notion of knowledge systems emphasizes structures in which knowledge is socially constructed, shared and eventually materialized as in a curriculum. The focus on actor networks stresses human relations as well as the relation between human and non-human actors e.g. the relation between humans and technology.

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This is an open call for submissions of articles to be included in the JPBLHE 2026 annual issue, which is published in late autumn of 2026.

Read More Read more about Call for papers to be published in Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education Vol. 14, 2026