Covid-19 has affected the lives of us all. The unexpected event brought a lot of new demands and changes, including changes in the daily routines. Education is undoubtedly one of the areas where the forms of interactions and ways of "being" of all its actors have changed from day to day. Deeper under interactions and actions, hidden from the cameras of computers and other technologies, remains their subjectivity - emotions, needs, desires, goals. In agreement with the social identity approach to education (Turner et al., 1987; Holland et al., 1998; Mavor et al., 2017) we view new ways of interaction as practices of self in the newly formed "worlds." In these worlds, new ways of social organization may emerge, and new positions and roles can be activated. Through them, a new understanding of oneself, new goals, and projects may appear.

Exploring learning identities during the pandemic could contribute to expanding our knowledge on the topic and would generate new research directions on cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social dimensions of learning.

In the changed context imposed by Covid-19, how students and teachers experience themselves as learners, how they relate to themselves as agents, their expectations regarding how to be a good student, how they seek and engage in learning experiences or their attitude towards learning and their own ability to learn might have also changed. It is well known that social background, previous learning experiences, and learning crises impact self-perceptions, but exploring learning identities during the pandemic could contribute to expanding our knowledge on the topic of learning identities.

Changes in student and teacher participation in everyday interactions and practices during Covid-19 could be approached in accordance with social identity theory (Bourdieu, 1990; Holland et al., 1998; Moore, 2008; Kaplan and Garver, 2018; Chen et al., 2018) and considered as a source of new demands that require self-reflection and improvisation. As a result, these forced improvisations can lead to new perspectives on oneself and provide impulses to develop a new sense of self in the context of education. We, therefore, believe that the experience of participating in these new "worlds" is not only a source of difficulties but also of new opportunities for improving educational conditions. Reflecting on these new experiences, we look for sources of new possibilities and identities that will contribute to the improvement of educational processes, to the increase of the well-being of all actors, and to the support of their autonomy, intrinsic motivation, or engagement in education.

This research topic aims to systematically explore how changes in educational settings imposed by the pandemic impact learning identities. The research topic welcomes research that investigates learning identity in secondary and higher education, in formal and non-formal settings, in various samples, or in different academic domains. Article contributions using various methodologies are welcomed, including quantitative and/or qualitative. Contributions may present (but are not limited to) data collected during the Covid-19 crisis.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How actors ‘participation in education was influenced by Covid-19?
• How changes in educational settings contributed to forming and/or transforming learning identity?
• How changes in learning identity and in self-perceptions can be measured?
• How is learning identity connected with students/teachers’ well-being?
• How do students ‘and teachers’ learning identities interplay?
• How are students’ learning identities related to academic expectations or different academic contexts?
• How do students with different social backgrounds (class, ethnicity, gender, or age) form or transform a learning identity in the context of Covid-19?
• What factors impact changes in learning identities?
• How are changes in educational contexts and learning identity relate to learning outcomes?
• How COVID 19 influenced the development of teachers’ and students’ digital learning identities?

Image: Andrew Neel

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