Overcoming educational barriers

Call for proposals: 23/05/2019
Funding period: from 01/07/2021
Field of action: Educational equity
Research projects: 12

Objectives of the funding measure
One in five 15-year-olds has problems understanding a text correctly. This is because the educational success of children and young people still depends strongly on their social background. This is demonstrated, among other things, in the results of the National Report on Education 2020. Equipping each child with the basics to open up the opportunity for participation in society therefore remains one of the great challenges of education policy. The current coalition agreement takes up this issue and has set the goal of overcoming educational barriers as a priority of educational research.
In order to create a reliable basis for action, one pivotal question needs to be answered: How can we intervene as early as possible to prevent the children and young people affected by these circumstances from being disadvantaged? This is the goal of the funding directive ‘Abbau von Bildungsbarrieren: Lernumwelten, Bildungserfolg und soziale Teilhabe’ (Overcoming educational barriers: Learning environments, educational success and social participation) in the Framework Programme for Empirical Educational Research. Within the scope of the research priority, this is expected to provide a comprehensive survey of the social living environment of education participants – taking account of the differing living conditions in both urban and rural areas. Until now, educational research has largely been concerned with ‘places of learning’ in the narrower institutional sense – such as day-care centres and schools. When considering the causes of educational inequalities, the focus was often on development of competence and on educational decisions made within schools and families and/or at the level of the school system. The fact that education and learning processes do not only take place at kindergarten and school, or that they are in constant interaction with learning environments outside of school, was less frequently considered. The significance of the living environments for the educational acquisition processes of children and young people will therefore be investigated more intensively within the scope of this funding directive. To this end, research projects will be funded which, in close cooperation between researchers and educational practitioners, examine the interactions between different learning environments and identify approaches that contribute to overcoming educational barriers.

Link to funding directive:

Richtlinie zur Förderung von Forschung zum „Abbau von Bildungsbarrieren: Lernumwelten, Bildungserfolg und soziale Teilhabe“ im Rahmenprogramm empirische Bildungsforschung

Link to projects in the Topic Finder