Educational Studies is a field that uses several disciplinary approaches to arrive at an integrative understanding of the educational process and of what it means to be an educated person within institutions that are themselves part of larger personal, social, and historical contexts. As an area of inquiry, the study of education is expansive, investigating such issues as the nature of knowledge and the ways in which people construct knowledge, the ways in which it can be most effectively learned, the relationships between social justice and a variety of educational practices and institutions, and the values that we need to survive and flourish within a global and multicultural context that is increasingly interconnected, yet fragile.