Guest editorial

Abstract

For any research field to develop and have a lasting impact, there must be a continuous debate about the theoretical foundations of the field, which could be defined as the historically situated and socially constructed conceptual understanding of the phenomena under investigation. In an area such as Maritime Education and Training (MET), which is concerned with professional learning, researchers need to be aware of their own and others’ (often implicit) theoretical assumptions pertaining not only to the conditions under which learning takes place or to what it means to learn but also to the very nature of learning/knowing (for example, Alexander et al. 2009; Illeris 2009; Lachman 1997; Sawyer 2014; Säljö 2009).