「The Graduate School」

Research

Research in Pillar 1 deals with the psychological and pedagogic conditions of learning and personal development, focusing on all stages from early childhood to adulthood. How are competencies developing at the kindergarten and school ages? What do children and young adults learn, and when do they learn it? In addition to such typical research questions at the individual (micro) level, principal investigators and doctoral researchers in Pillar 1 also investigate the role of institutions and their impact over time (meso level). For example, how do formal institutions such as kindergartens and schools influence the development of competencies amongst children and young adults? What factors do parents consider when choosing a particular kindergarten, elementary or secondary school for their children to attend, and with what effect? How do families, non-formal and informal environments shape the development of children?

Research in Pillar 1 concentrates on three broader areas that have been under-researched hitherto:

• the way educational systems and their institutions shape cognitive and personal development from early education to adult and further education;
• processes of education and competence development within families;
• dimensions of non-formal and informal learning outside families and schools, such as learning through participation in youth organisations, sport clubs and political and religious associations.

Researchers in Pillar 1 also engage in more explicit cross-national comparisons of educational processes and learning trajectories to establish the generality of findings and to study the impact of historically grown and country-specific, institutional settings.

Research Projects

Externally funded research projects associated with Pillar 1 include, among others,

• the National Educational Panel Study (Nationales Bildungspanel, NEPS);
• the DFG funded project RebeL (Religious and Professional Beliefs of School Teachers);
• the EU funded project SEED: Social InEquality and its Effects on child Development: A study of birth cohorts in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands;

Research

While Pillar 1 has a focus on educational processes in early childhood, kindergarten, elementary school and progression to secondary school, researchers in Pillar 2 deal with inequalities in educational achievements and choices across the entire life course. The major focus is on the extent and origins of such inequalities. Why do gender- and class-specific differences in competence development and educational decisions persist? How do they develop over the educational career? Which processes contribute to a decreasing or an increasing impact of social background over the life course? Why do we observe variation in these matters across educational systems? In addition, Pillar 2 takes up questions of ethnic inequalities in education. Why do immigrants and their children in many cases face difficulties in school? How do social and ethnic inequalities interact? In a third stream of research, Pillar 2 addresses the returns on education over the life.

Doctoral students within Pillar 2 employ a range of innovative approaches to disentangle processes of educational convergence and divergence. They move beyond the cross-sectional design of many traditional analyses by

• taking an explicit and innovative life-course perspective, examining the accumulation of educational advantages and disadvantages throughout the educational career;
• comparing educational choices and achievements across countries;
• combining cross-sectional, cross-country and longitudinal perspectives.

In substantive terms, researchers in Pillar 2 are concerned with a variety of pressing questions, including the structural integration of immigrants and their descendants into educational systems.

Research Projects

Externally funded research projects associated with Pillar 2 include, among others,

• the National Educational Panel Study (Nationales Bildungspanel, NEPS);
• a NORFACE research grant for the study of Causes and Consequences of Socio-Cultural Integration Processes among New Immigrants in Europe;
• the DFG funded project Origins matter: Immigrant selectivity in Western Europe;
• the DFG funded project Health Measures and Health Inequality over The Life Course.

Research

Most industrial societies have witnessed an increase in social inequality during the past three decades. Yet, this trend and its social mechanisms are still not sufficiently understood by social scientists. Researchers in Pillar 3 address questions such as the following: To what extent do changes in the labour markets (e.g. through increasing international competition or flexibilisation) increase social inequality? In what way are social risks accumulating over life courses under different labour market regimes? To what extent do imbalances of supply and demand of human capital across generations explain rising levels of social inequality? Do demographic changes such as declining fertility and increasing life expectancy increase or decrease social inequality? To what extent are specific forms of social inequality mitigated or exacerbated in different welfare state regimes? What are the consequences of migration for social inequality in modern societies?

Doctoral students in Pillar 3 receive an excellent grounding in state-of-the-art of research on human capital, labour markets and demography and their relationship to social inequality. At the same time, they find themselves part of a stimulating research community that helps them produce new insights into these issues. Research on social inequality at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences is characterised by:

• the use of longitudinal data to examine the ways in which social status and resources increase or decrease over the life course;
• a cross-national perspective that goes beyond already well-researched cases;
• a multi-level approach that considers developments at the firm, regional, national, European and global level;
• an emphasis on the complex interplay of various factors such as changing labour market structures, changes in the supply and demand of human capital and demographic changes.

Research

The major focus of Pillar 4 is on the pressure that economic and political transnationalisation generates on political institutions and societies still organised around traditional territorial principles. Typical questions asked by researchers in Pillar 4 include the following: How can elected democratic politicians be held accountable for developments they have little control over? How do citizens respond to the perceived loss of democratic control in a globalising world? To what extent do political parties embrace ‘new citizens’ of immigrant-origin as voters and members? How can national governments be successful in recapturing the capacity to meet the demands of citizens through international institutions? What are the conditions for successful policy coordination in trans- and supranational governance structures?

Doctoral researchers in Pillar 4 approach questions of democracy and governance from a variety of perspectives. They study them:

• at the level of individual citizens, organisations (such as churches, political parties and interest groups) and nation-states, as well as at the sub-, trans- and international level;
• as complex interactions of these tiers;
• empirically as well as from the point of view of analytical and normative political theory.

Research Projects

Externally funded research projects associated with Pillar 4 include, among others,

• the DFG funded project UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies and Group Agency;
• the DFG funded Research Unit  on the Emergence of Collective Agency (RUECA);
• the DFG funded LACAN Project (Legislators between Accountability and Collective Agency)