Editorial The journey to proficiency: Exploring new objective methodologies to capture the process of learning and professional development

Over the last decades, educational research established different foci on learning – all of them aiming at understanding how learning takes place and how its outcomes can be improved by instruction. They can be distinguished regarding the object of observation: (a) There is research focusing input to learning processes, particular discussing content and teacher or learner characteristics influencing learning; (b) other research approaches exist that focus learning processes themselves, (c) finally there is research focusing learning outcomes. What varied over the time is the emphasis of these foci. For example, the current interest on international comparisons of educational systems (i.e. TIMSS, ISGLU, PISA) addresses research with focus on learning outcomes.