Call for papers - JPBLHE annual issue 2025
The regular issue of Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education is published annually (late Autumn). We are currently open for submissions (both papers and case studies) for the 2025 issue.
Editorial criteria for research papers
The editors are particularly interested in receiving high-quality original research articles, informed by robust empirical and theoretical underpinnings from the fields and disciplines related to problem-based learning in higher education. The journal is also interested in receiving articles that make an original practical or critical contribution to research theory, practice, knowledge, and understanding of contemporary themes, developments and current thinking in problem-based learning in higher education.
Papers should in general contain the following:
- A clear structure including a research question stating the ambition of the paper. A research question should be the start of departure whether it is a conceptual or an empirical paper.
- Please address how the paper is going to bring significance to the literature within Problem-based learning – How can the PBL research community benefit from the paper. In this regard every paper needs to demonstrate an overview of the community and the literature – that is, to build upon the existing literature.
- A section discussing “Implications for practice”. The ambition of the journal is not just to analyze variation in PBL but to use these variations to discuss the future of PBL as a pedagogy for promoting learning and development.
For further information on structure and content please visit the Author Guidelines
Editorial criteria for PBL Case studies
- PBL cases disseminate experiences and share PBL-practices, rather than presenting novel research findings. For more information see section further below.
- PBL cases discuss experiences of a particular PBL design experiment, its implementation or orchestration of PBL, which is not necessarily innovative or new, but could follow a well-known pedagogical model (with perhaps smaller modifications and changes).
- PBL cases are shorter than research papers (max 3000 words)
- Layout and referencing should follow the regular Author Guidelines
PBL cases should in general contain the following parts, not necessarily in the order given below:
- An abstract/summary
- Same requirements as for research papers.
- Theoretical/Pedagogical framework:
- Description and discussion of PBL interpretation (and other relevant theoretical frameworks) and how this guided the design of the particular PBL implementation.
- A description of the context and implementation
- Where did the PBL implementation take place, duration, number of students/teachers, etc. What activities were there for teachers and students.
- Evaluation/analysis of of PBL implementation
- How was the PBL implementation evaluated and/or its results assessed?
- Results, reflections and recommendations
- What were the experiences and results of the PBL implementation and what were in retrospect the reasons or causes for these results. What could have been done otherwise, what did you learn from the experiment, and how might this, more broadly, be useful to the wider (international) community of PBL researchers and practitioners.
Other than the length of the cases, the PBL-cases should follow the regular Author Guidelines. Also, the cases will only be reviewed by one reviewer, and mainly with the purpose of identifying whether the PBL case is understandable to others, encompass sufficiently rich descriptions, and whether there is a well-argued relation between pedagogical framework, concrete implementation and then the results and reflections.
For more information about Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education, please visit About the Journal