When learning moves: An Ecological perspective on higher education

Abstract

Higher education in today’s scenario is increasingly marked by learner’s mobility, discontinuity of education and life course transitions. Participation of students extends beyond conventional, linear pathways. Learner increasingly negotiate changing geographical, institutional, social, and digital environments that influence their educational experiences. No doubt existing scholarship has extensively examined lifelong learning, mobility and educational transitions. But this paper addresses the conceptual gap by proposing Ecological Learning Mobility. This theoretical framework integrates Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Theory with contemporary mobility and elucidates how learning is continuously reconstructed through dynamic interactions across multiple ecological systems, offering a more integrated lens to understand the learner and his/her educational journey in conditions of discontinuity and flux. This paper argues that learner’s educational experiences are shaped by unique interaction among the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macro system and chronosystem, rather than by individual characteristics alone.

Keywords - Higher Education; Ecological Learning Mobility; Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Theory; Learner Mobility; Lifelong Learning; Educational Continuity; Women Learners; Military Spouses; Educational Environments.