Culture, Education and Institutions

Our research is based on the assumption that educational institutions, such as the family, the school, the university and organizations for non-formal education, are expressions of cultural and social expectations, which are often sanctioned and directed by legislation but organized, guided, funded and controlled in very different ways. We examine how these institutions, in which individuals and society interact, have played a variety of different roles and have undergone a change in meaning over time, especially since the advent of democracy and comprehensive human and children's rights.

An aspect of our research emphasizes the discrepancy between state control of educational issues in families, which is largely limited to establishing frameworks and basic obligations, and the state’s governing of schools, which has led to an enormous expansion and differentiation of the educational system and the professionalization of the training of teachers, educators and administrators. It thereby focuses on the emergence and effects of the modern school system along with its dual function of national integration and social stratification. Drawing on historical, comparative and sociological methodologies, we examine these processes of integration and stratification across different time periods and cultural contexts, taking into account questions of individual and collective emancipation, both through and in spite of education. Particular attention is paid to social justice issues that have an impact on people’s lives, such as exclusion, selection and transition systems and forced and voluntary migration.

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