The project LIFETRACK 

(“Life-Course Dynamics of Educational Tracking”) researches the long-term impact of different organizational forms of education systems on social inequality. The impact on the lives and professional careers shall be identified of school systems in which students are distributed into different types of schools early on, and of systems in which no separation takes place. Thus, data regarding the educational and occupational trajectories of students from Denmark, Germany, England, Finland, France, and Italy will be compared. The involved persons at the University of Bamberg, Prof. Dr. Steffen Schindler, and Prof. Dr. Corinna Kleinert, who is also Head of Department 2 at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, evaluate data about the German education system gathered as part of the National Education Panel Study (NEPS) for the project.

The research project SEED (“Social InEquality and its Effects on child Development: A study of birth cohorts in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands”) seeks to take a closer look at the development of small children: Connections between developmental differences of children regarding linguistic, social, and emotional skills, and the conditions in which they grow up will be investigated. The level of education, or the social environment of the family, as well as a migrant background might, for example, account for the development of social inequalities already during early childhood. Next to data from Great Britain and the Netherlands, the study also analyzes NEPS data about the German education system. At the Bamberg location, Prof. Dr. Sabine Weinert, Director of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories and also Chair of the Department Psychology I–Developmental Psychology at the University of Bamberg, Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach, former LIfBi Director, Dr. Jutta von Maurice, Executive Director of Research at the LIfBi, and Dr. Manja Attig, LIfBi, supervise the project.

Both projects are funded by NORFACE („New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe“). 

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) is, among others, a member of this association of European research organizations.

A press release by the University of Bamberg regarding the start of both projects can be found here (German only).