{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021157436216552583, 'fraction_numerical': 0.013067828251400125, 'mean_word_length': 5.114068441064639, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Capturing social and cultural influences: relating individual work-life experiences to context

As Anatole France suggests, education is a phenomenon that involves self-reflection to qualify what one knows and still does not know. One of the most valued rituals and social experiences of scholars is the gathering together at conferences to share perspectives. From 2013 to 2015, I served as the first elected President of the Work Family Researchers Network (WFRN) and Program Chair of an international conference held in June 2014 in New York City with over 200 sessions and 42 countries represented. This special issue reflects a partnership with the journal Community, Work & Family to capture conference highlights. Below I give a brief overview of papers and the future challenges I called for in the WFRN Presidential address to move work-life research from the margins to the mainstream (Kossek, 2014). As you read this introduction, consider how the issues noted might motivate your next study to focus on under-examined and meaningful questions in our field. While each paper helps to advance understanding of cultural and contextual issues, many gaps remain. Like the work-family field, the WFRN conference was a rich dynamic experience including researchers, practitioners and policy-makers from around the globe. Participants shared viewpoints on what they ‘know’ are truths from their ideographic vantage point with colleagues from other cultures and disciplinary perspectives to fill in and make salient though scholarly interactions – how much they still do not know (and have yet to learn).