Children's learning processes in family travel: A narrative review through a social cognitive lens

While the significance of family travel in facilitating children's informal learning is widely recognized, current research overlooks how children learn during such journeys. This study adopts social cognitive theory (SCT) as its theoretical framework and conducts a narrative synthesis of the fragmented environmental, behavioural, and personal factors influencing children's learning processes in family travel. The synthesis results in an SCT-informed integrative framework for understanding children's learning processes in the context of family travel, identifying existing knowledge gaps, and outlining future research directions. Furthermore, this integrative framework advances SCT by examining long-term, multi-contextual learning experiences in the informal learning setting. The findings of this study provide valuable insights and practical advice for parents and tourism professionals seeking to optimize the educational benefits of family travel for children. • Using social cognitive theory to synthesize child learning process in family travel. • Expanding educational tourism experiences by integrating informal learning processes. • Advancing social cognitive theory in long-term, multi-contextual informal learning. • Guiding the optimization of educational benefits from family travel for children.