Recent years have seen a dynamic growth of research communities addressing conditions, processes and outcomes of learning in formal and informal environments. Two of them have markedly advanced the field: The community on research on learning and instruction that has been organized in the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), and the learning sciences community, including the computer-supported collaborative learning community, organised in the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). This special issue brings together researchers from these two communities who are currently contributing to advancing the methodology. This introductory article explores the differences and commonalities between these two communities and offers "four main potentials for innovation" resulting from developments for learning research, no matter if situated in research on learning and instruction or in learning research. The contributions to this special issue each address one of these potentials: (1) Increased gain in scientific understanding through more "messy studies" when investigating "real" learning in new fields; (2) More comprehensive understanding of learning phenomena through the use of methodologies that can handle multiple units of analysis and include process analyses; (3) Overcoming overreliance on self-reports: From personal constructs to series of interactions unfolding over time; and (4) Building bridges between research on learning and cognitive neuroscience.