Editorial – The Landscape of Prior Learning Assessment: A Sampling from a Diverse Field

We live today, as educators and global citizens, in a time of convergence, due in great part to the phenomenal rise of social media and networking tools that have reduced barriers to and boundaries between exchange and domains, beyond what our early trail-blazing distance educators could even have imagined. This special issue of IRRDOL features another exciting convergence – one that represents the somewhat narrow overlap of interests between open and distance learning (ODL) and the recognition of prior learning (RPL). In this special issue, therefore, we offer a selection of articles and practitioner-based reports that, in varying measures, span both fields. Two important foundational issues underlying the prior learning field should be addressed here. The first concerns language. Prior learning recognition, although practiced globally, has a wide variety of labels and acronyms. In Canada, we are most likely to refer to it as PLAR – prior learning assessment and recognition. RPL – recognition of prior learning – is also beginning to become popular in certain Canadian jurisdictions. In the United States, PLA – prior learning assessment – is the most common label. Around the rest of the world, the shared understanding that informally or experientially attained learning can be recognized for credit toward credentialization is referred to as the assessment of prior learning (APL), the assessment/accreditation of prior and experiential learning (APEL), and a variety of other similar terms. You will notice, in the articles in this issue, a variety in terminology that would logically accompany an international publication. This short editorial uses the PLAR acronym. International

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