“Education as landscape – On the relationship between formal and nonformal educational institutions as well as formal and informal learning during childhood and adolescence” is a joint Graduate School by the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, the University of Bamberg, and the Technical University Georg-Simon-Ohm in Nuremberg, as well as the Lutheran University of Applied Sciences (Evangelische Hochschule Nürnberg) in cooperation with the Hans-Böckler-Foundation. The doctoral dissertations produced within this Graduate School focus on the reciprocal connection between formal and nonformal education.

In a public guest lecture, Dr. Michaela Sixt introduced the concept as well as the analysis potential of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). She illustrated this potential by giving a brief example of the NEPS starting cohorts for Kindergarten, ninth graders, and adults. In a fruitful discussion, it became apparent that especially the constructs of NEPS Pillar 2 “Education Processes in Learning Environments” offer a number of links in relation to the work of the scholarship holders. The extent and volume of NEPS data attracted wide interest among the participants – because they can serve as a benchmark for data collected as part of their own research projects.