PLA Inside Out (PLAIO) is the first scholarly online journal entirely devoted to the recognition of prior experiential learning.
The goal of this electronic publication is to help anchor prior learning assessment (PLA) work as central to our thinking about teaching and learning, to support and recognize scholarly work in the field of prior learning assessment, to provoke new ideas and experiences in PLA practices, to provide a central repository for PLA-relevant resources, and to place our PLA work in an historical context.
Prior learning assessment is known throughout the world by many different names: Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), Assessment of Prior Learning (APL), Assessment of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL), Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR), and Prior Learning Assessment and Articulation (PLAA), to name a few. The goal of PLAIO is to address all forms of recognizing, articulating and assessing prior college-level learning, regardless of its name or its country of origin.
Co-editors:
Nan Travers, Director of Collegewide Academic Review
Alan Mandell, College Professor of Adult Learning and Mentoring
SUNY Empire State College
PLAInsideOut [at] esc [dot] edu
http://www.PLAIO.org
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PLA Inside Out Inaugural Issue
The Legacy of PLA: 40 Years of Practice
We celebrate the recognition of prior learning. An experimental activity that began in earnest less than a half-century ago in a handful of North American colleges and universities is now practiced in thousands of institutions, large and small, across the world and referred to in many ways. Initiated as a means to legitimate the power of experience, to acknowledge the limitations of traditional assumptions about knowledge, and to question seat time as the only means to judge true learning, the recognition of prior learning has become a critical tool of access and a significant part of a movement for educational and social justice.
This inaugural issue of PLAIO focuses on the historical roots of prior learning assessment and examines how these foundations are connected to--or disconnected from--current trends in higher education.
Among the kinds of questions we hope to take up and for which we seek research studies, essays, critical reflections, comments-on-practice, and descriptions and analyses of student experiences are:
How has the recognition of prior experiential learning been used as a means of educational redress?
How have such PLA models been linked to particular efforts to change education and society?
In what ways has the recognition of prior experiential learning changed the perception of college-level learning and assessment, and perhaps the very landscape of higher education?
What models, policies and procedures of the recognition of prior experiential learning have increased access or, on the other hand, created impediments to the acknowledgment of non-collegiate student learning?
What models, policies and procedures have provided more successful institutional outcomes (e.g., retention and graduation rates)?
What models, policies and procedures have supported significant student outcomes (e.g., transformational learning, academic skills, and practice in reflection)?
What tensions have arisen between PLA-as-tool-of-change and PLA policies that have emphasized efficiency and ease of evaluation? How have these tensions played out within and across institutions?
What new ideas, new models, new insights and experiments with the recognition of prior learning might continue to extend the legacy of PLA as a tool of educational and social justice?
We encourage submissions that address any one or a combination of these questions. We also very much welcome other writings on the recognition of prior learning that are not directly tied to this issue’s theme.
Scholarly articles should be 7,500 words or less. These writings can be research-based, practice-based, or theoretical. Scholarly articles are peer reviewed.
Literature reviews and case studies should be between 500 and 1,000 words. These writings are reviewed by the co-editors.
All correspondence, including questions about a possible contribution to this journal, should be directed to: PLAInsideOut [at] esc [dot] edu.
All articles and materials should be submitted to http://www.PLAIO.org.
Deadline for all submissions for Issue #1:
1 September 2011
