Vol 9, No. 2, December 2014, pp. 1-4 http://reflectingeducation.net © UCL Institute of Education, University College London ISSN 1746-9082 Supporting Life-Long Learning Journeys through the Stimulation of Reflexivity in Learners: Five Complementary Perspectives Carol Evans University of Exeter, UK Eva Cools Vlerick Business School, Belgium ABSTRACT The articles in this special issue of Reflecting Education: Building Learning Capacity for Life emanated from the eighteenth international Education, Learning, Styles, Individual differences Network (ELSIN) conference held in Billund, Denmark in 2013. ELSIN is the only multi- disciplinary international research organisation specifically promoting the importance of work on styles and other individual learning differences within educational and workplace contexts. The five articles comprising this special issue are representative of the broad focus of ELSIN in their coverage of a range of contexts. Participants of the present studies do not only originate from institutes in different countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, and Ireland), but also represent diverse education levels (school students; under-postgraduates in higher education), and a variety of disciplines (e.g., accountancy; business and economics; management; multimedia and communications). INTRODUCTION The theme Building capacity for life has at its roots the concept of supporting learners’ life- long learning journeys, and specifically learners’ (teacher and student) development of knowledge, skills, and attributes to sustain learning beyond the immediate requirements of a particular context. Within this special issue, five different but complementary perspectives are provided on how to stimulate life-long learning. Common to all studies is their focus on how learners can be more involved in and responsible for their own learning achievements by reflecting on and thinking about their own learning and development. Fundamental to managing the learning process is an understanding of one’s beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the nature of knowing and how this impacts on one’s approaches to learning and teaching. Two of the articles in this special issue specifically address this theme in their focus on epistemological beliefs, that is, teachers’ and students’ views about learning and teaching. Rebmann, Schlömer, Berding, and Paechter study pre- service business and economics teachers; and Brauer and Wilde look at pre-service science teachers; both these studies are situated within the German context. Rebmann, Schlömer, Berding, and Paechter highlight the importance of alignment between teachers’ epistemological beliefs, their perceptions of their students’ epistemological beliefs, and the requirements of the curriculum. A key issue to explore is teachers’ assumptions of their own learners’ epistemological beliefs and what these are predicated on, especially