Educational Research for Social Change is an international peer-reviewed journal established in 2012 in the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela University. The idea of educational research having the potential of being transformative - through working with communities and through various participatory research approaches - is something that is still very new in many educational research circles. This journal, therefore, aims to play a critical role in confirming the importance of educational research as social change, contributing to the theorising thereof, and the dissemination of current research to a broad, cross-disciplinary audience of scholars and practitioners in the field of education.
ERSC publishes scientific articles which draw on participatory methodologies such as Arts-Based Research (ABR), Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Participatory Action Research (PAR), Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR), Participatory Visual Research (PVR/PVM), Self-Study Research (SSR) and other such empirical research, located in critical and transformative paradigms, seen as key in contributing to the transformation of education research and education itself. ERSC also publishes original conceptual papers, book reviews and conference and project reports which are relevant to the scope of the journal. Each publication should clearly demonstrate its relevance to social change. We do not accept articles that merely report on issues, where researchers harvest data from participants and interpret it to develop recommendations for change - the research itself must lead to some form of change in at least one of the following areas; change in the researcher, change in the participants, change in the situation.