About the school
The faculty's participating researchers (currently 39 professors and 73 research assistants) investigate the individual, institutional, and social prerequisites and processes of learning in (extra)curricular contexts and convey the resulting findings to students and teachers. Leuphana has thus distinguished itself both nationally and internationally in teacher training and empirical educational research, including teaching and competence research. In social pedagogy, it is one of the few locations in Germany that has a polyvalent orientation that conducts basic and application-oriented research with a view to both career-oriented and training-oriented topics.
The faculty is currently expanding its profile across the research areas of the respective institutes through three research centers in educational research.
- The ZEB (Center for Empirical Educational Research), founded jointly with Leibniz University Hannover, brings together expertise at the highest level of research in the areas of educational measurement, educational monitoring, and educational innovation & change, and strengthens evidence-based and forward-looking school and education policy in Lower Saxony.
- The ERLE (Educational Research on Language and Education) research center creates space for innovative and interdisciplinary research, in which scientists from a wide range of disciplines participate and conduct basic research on common issues in an interdisciplinary manner.
- The research and development work at the Future Center for Teacher Training (ZZL) aims to integrate theory and school practice, working in a network of currently six campus schools and strengthening cooperation between schools, study seminars, and extracurricular institutions.
In its role as a hub for science, psychology sees itself as a connecting element between the faculties. Within the teaching and research area of “Psychology in Education,” it not only focuses on socially relevant topics in the context of education, school, and social work, but also on the connection to research activities in sustainability and economics as well as political science. The various focal topics, such as reading regularity, negotiation and sustainability, digitization of prevention and health promotion, or education and gender equality, are bundled across faculties under the umbrella theme of “Psychology of Transformation.”
Further information on psychology in research and teaching at Leuphana.
In order to effectively solve the challenges and problems of today's educational reality, it is important to pool expertise and conduct research in dialogue with practitioners. Two initiatives in which researchers from the Faculty of Education are involved exemplify this approach:
The Leuphana Innovation Community School Development and Leadership combines the scientific expertise of the university with the practical skills of stakeholders from schools, extracurricular educational institutions, administration, and business. Regular meetings promote knowledge exchange, mutual networking, and learning. The focus is on the topics of democracy and diversity, leadership, digitalization and AI, and education for sustainable development.
As one of three scientific areas at Leuphana, “Future Trends in Education” pursues the goal of improving school education and preparing students for the future in the areas of democracy, sustainability, and digitality. To this end, researchers at Leuphana, together with colleagues from partner universities in Lower Saxony and non-university research institutions, are investigating how skills such as civic literacy (democratic action) and sustainability literacy (sustainable action) can be learned, promoted, and integrated into society.