Faculty of Education and Culture

The Faculty of Education and Culture is a transdisciplinary research community. Research conducted in the Faculty critically analyses and helps to understand contemporary issues and concerns associated with education and learning from early childhood to adult life. We produce research-based knowledge for societal decision-making and developing educational institutions and organisations. In addition, our research can be used to support individual and communal agency, emancipatory transformations and processes of edification.

Our research environments are, for example, education systems, early childhood institutions, schools, higher education institutions, workplaces, non-governmental organisations and advocacy groups.

We understand education as a societal phenomenon intertwined with the surrounding cultural, ecological, technological, political, economic and social environments. Many research projects are studying societal and cultural changes and transformation processes. Our researchers produce new research-based knowledge on how to tackle contemporary societal challenges with the help of education and learning.

At the Faculty level, we focus on three complementing and intertwining themes. We use both empirical and theoretical perspectives on current educational issues. The thematic areas are: Education in society, Communities in education, and Learning, pedagogy and learning cultures. 

Our 13 research groups explore education, training and learning from societal, institutional, community and individual perspectives. The web pages of our research groups describe our projects and their theoretical and methodological underpinnings in more detail:

• ECEPP Early Childhood Education Institutions, Policies and Practices
• EduKnow Knowledge, Power, and Politics in Education 
• EduLit  Educating for Future Literacies 
• EquJust Equality and planetary justice in adult, vocational and higher education 
• HET Higher Education in Transition  
• MTT Multiculturalism, transnationalism and transformation in education 
• OPPI Learning and Development in School 
• PGL Professional Growth and Learning
• POISED Political philosophies and sociologies of education 
• REAL Research Group for Education, Assessment and Learning 
• RESET Research Engagement for Sustainable and Equitable Transformations 
• SMD Subject Matter Didactics Research Group
• SPECS Spatial Socialization and Environmental Citizenship Research Collective