The Römisch-Germanische Zentralmuseum (RGZM) is an internationally active research institution for archaeology. On the basis of all available sources, it researches man and his actions in his natural and cultural environment, from the dawn of man in the Palaeolithic Age to the Middle Ages. For the benefit of gaining knowledge, it combines the humanities and the natural sciences, fundamentally incorporating our expertise in restoration technology, in an interdisciplinary approach that transcends the boundaries of different scientific cultures. As a research museum of the Leibniz Association, the RGZM is both a place of science and a place of dialogue with the public: modern research and the educational mission are closely linked here.
Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID)
The Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) is the supra-regional scientific research support organization for psychology in German-speaking countries. It supports the entire scientific work process from gathering ideas and researching literature to documenting research, archiving data and publishing the results, based on an ideal-type research cycle.
It is committed to the idea of open science and sees itself as a public open science institute for psychology. As a research-based support institution, ZPID conducts basic application research in the area of research literacy and user-friendly research support. Further expansions of the research area are in progress around the topics of research syntheses in psychology and big data in psychology.
The central, free-of-charge services include the search portal PubPsych, the open access publishing platform PsychOpen and the psychology repository PsychArchives. New services for study planning, preregistration of psychological studies, data collection and data analysis are under development.
Important projects:
- In its reference database PSYNDEX (accessible, e.g., via the search portal PubPsych), ZPID documents scientific publications from the field of psychology and other scientific disciplines (e.g., educational and social sciences) related to educational research.
- ZPID’s reference database PSYNDEX Tests (accessible via the search portal PubPsych) contains diagnostic tools from the field of educational psychology as well as related fields of application (e.g., pedagogics, curative education, speech therapy) which are well-suited for applications in educational assessment. An open access archive of psychological tests (“Elektronisches Testarchiv“) offers a number of assessment tools for research purposes.
- PsychData – Research Data for Psychology
With PsychData, the ZPID has developed a data-sharing platform specialized for psychology research. - In its research focus „Research Literacy and User-Friendly Research Support“, ZPID investigates information behavior in formal as well as informal learning contexts and develops interventions aimed at fostering information literacy.
- ZPID is involved in research monitoring educational research in Germany.
- ZPID conducts scientometric analyses to monitor the internationalization of educational research and Educational Psychology in German-speaking countries (ZPID Monitor).
ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research
The ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim is a nonprofit and independent institute with the legal form of a limited liability company (GmbH). Founded in 1990 on the basis of a public-private initiative in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg in co-operation with the University of Mannheim, ZEW is one of Germany’s leading economic research institutes, and has an excellent reputation throughout Europe.
ZEW pursues four key objectives:
- To conduct research of the highest quality
- To provide scientifically grounded economic policy advising
- To train up-and-coming economists
- To inform the professional and lay public.
The Institute focuses on decision-makers in politics, economics, and administration, scientists in the national and international arena as well as the interested public. Regular interviews on the situation on the financial markets and the economic situation of the information industry as well as the large-scale annual study on innovation activities in the German economy are representative for the different types of information provided by ZEW.
Under the leadership of Achim Wambach, the president of the Institute, and Thomas Kohl, the director of business and administration, ZEW currently employs a staff of 176 in seven research departments, two research groups, and two service areas.
In order to ensure a high standard of excellence in research, ZEW promotes international co-operation with universities (e.g. integration in doctoral programs) and the ongoing development of its staff by granting periods of paid release from normal project work. These sabbaticals can be used for postgraduate doctorates, postdoctoral theses, or fellowships at renowned universities and research institutions.
The high quality of ZEW’s research work was confirmed in 1998, when the German Council of Science and Humanities evaluated ZEW and recommended its inclusion in the joint state and federal funding program. Since 2005, the Institute has received basic funding from this program. ZEW is a member of the Leibniz Association, a network of research institutes with outstanding scientific qualifications.
ion, a network of research institutes with outstanding scientific qualifications.
An excellent evaluation result in 2009 characterised the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research as an institution of international significance. Due to this assessment, the Leibniz-Association Senate recommended to the German federal and state governments to promote ZEW according to national strategies of science policy. The senate explicitly stated that “ZEW is an extraordinarily successful institute of empirical economic research with great prospects”.
Research Approach and Research Fields:
ZEW’s guiding mission is to study the “optimal performance of markets and institutions in Europe”. To this end, ZEW applies a plurality of methodologies, with a clear focus on microeconomic and microeconometric research. The Institute co-operates closely with other scientific disciplines as necessary to address research questions. In this context, the research institute distinguishes itself, inter alia, in the analysis of internationally comparative questions in the European context and in the creation of data bases which are eminently important as a basis for scientific research. In addition, ZEW provides external persons and bodies with excerpts of selected data stocks for the purpose of scientific research.
ZEW is subdivided into the following six research fields
- Labour Markets and Human Resources
- Digital Economy
- Economics of Innovations and Industrial Dynamics
- International Finance and Financial Management
- Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmantal Management
- Corporate Taxation and Public Finance
- Social Policy and Redistribution
and one research group
- Market Design
Evaluations in regular intervals ensure the quality of the work performed in the research fields and its orientation towards the Institute’s research program. Evaluations are carried out by the Scientific Advisory Council of ZEW, which is composed of renowned German and foreign scientists as well as of executives from the economy and public administration.
The ZEW provides external scientists with a range of research data sets. The ZEW research data offered at ZEW-FDZ is individual data collected through ZEW business surveys and ZEW expert surveys.
Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS)
The Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) is a non-university research centre located in the federal state of Berlin. The umbrella organization of ZAS is the association Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V. (GWZ). Since January 2017 the Bund-Länder Commission has been supporting ZAS’s research as a member of the Leibniz-Association.
Research at ZAS is dedicated to the description and explanation of the structure of natural language and its breadth of variation. The aim is to better understand this central human capacity and its biological, cognitive and social factors, thereby laying the foundation for the understanding of the basic structure, acquisition, and processing of language and its impairments as well as for applications in language technology.
In four research areas at ZAS, experts from all core areas of linguistics are currently working: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Lexicon, Semantics and Pragmatics as well as Child Language Acquisition. Externally acquired third-party funded projects are attached to the four research areas. The concentration of active research in multiple linguistic sub-disciplines in a single institution is unique in Germany and facilitates a direct exchange of current research findings and methods. Numerous stays of visiting researchers and scholarship holders, national and international workshops and conferences provide important impulses for the scientific work at ZAS.
Important Work and Services:
ZAS can draw from expertise in monolingual and bilingual language acquisition accumulated over the past 20 years. Important fields of work in the research area Language Development and Multilingualism (FB II) are the development of discourse skills in pre- and elementary school age, the identification and detailed description of language development disorders and the opportunities and problems in multilingual language acquisition. ZAS has carried out studies on the acquisition of German in children speaking the most common migration languages in Germany (for example, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish), some of them as longitudinal studies over the course of several years.
ZAS develops language aptitude evaluations and instruments for the diagnosis and treatment of language development disorders as well as methods for supporting the acquisition of German that take the speaker’s knowledge of their native language into account. The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), developed at ZAS, is an instrument for testing the narrative abilities of children in currently 94 languages. It is used in more than 70 countries. It is used in more than 50 countries. Through the worldwide usage of the instrument a multinational MAIN-Network was formed, which is coordinated by ZAS. The Russian language proficiency test for multilingual children is a linguistically and psycholinguistically well-founded test for bilingual children of preschool and elementary school age, which is also applied worldwide.
ZAS develops language development programs and works on methods of conveying linguistic knowledge in a playful way. In the European COMENIUS project Friendly Resources for Playful Speech Therapy (FREPY), interactive and multi-functional materials for language development in German, Russian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Slovenian were created. These games, puzzles, picture stories, etc. are available as a print version and online.
The Berlin Interdisciplinary Network for Multilingualism (BIVEM), affiliated with the ZAS, combines basic research, expertise and transfer of knowledge. Within the framework of BIVEM, longitudinal studies on multilingual acquisition and language development have been conducted, new initiatives as well as joint activities with cooperation partners have been launched and connections between science and practice have been strengthened. In addition, BIVEM offers research-based advice on multilingual language acquisition for parents, pedagogical professionals, medical staff and policy makers, as well as develops training modules for further education. The flyer series ‘Science for Life’, which already includes five topics in seven languages (German, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, English, Persian, and French), is in high demand: over 150,000 copies have already been distributed. It provides a special contribution to the transfer of knowledge from research to practice and will continue to be expanded with new topics and language versions.
Created under the auspices of ZAS, “Das mehrsprachige Klassenzimmer” (The Multilingual Classroom) is designed for teachers in German schools who have immigrant students in their classes. It provides stimulating and easy-to-understand background information on creative ways to deal with multilingualism in the classroom.
ZAS also develops orthographies and teaching materials for small, endangered languages, such as a dictionary of the Melanesian language Daakie.
ZAS aims to further investigate linguistic factors in the acquisition of the language of education, taking into account specific challenges such as other mother tongues and specific language development disorders.
WZB Berlin Social Science Center
The WZB Berlin Social Science Center conducts basic research with a focus on problems of modern societies in a globalized world. Around 160 German and international researchers work at the WZB, including sociologists, political scientists, economists, legal scholars, and historians. They study developments, problems, and opportunities for innovation in modern societies. Their research is theory-based, problem-oriented, often long-term and mostly based on international comparisons. The research areas are: education, work and life chances, markets and choice, society and economic dynamics, international politics and law, dynamics of political systems, migration and diversity.
One research focus at the WZB is sociological education research on vocational training and continuing education. Research devoted to these topics is primarily performed at the research unit “Skill Formation and Labor Markets” (Director: Prof. Dr. Heike Solga) and the WZB-based project group “National Educational Panel Study: Vocational Training and Lifelong Learning” (Head: Prof. Dr. Reinhard Pollak). The WZB makes theoretical and empirical contributions to improving the German education systems, fighting educational deprivation, and smoothing the transition from school to work. All of this involves international comparisons. An important focus of education research at the WZB is the relation between education, labor market, and social policy.
Important Research Projects:
- The project group “National Educational Panel Study” at the Social Science Research Center (WZB) is involved in Stage 6 (Vocational Training and Transition to the Labor Market) and Stage 8 (Adult Education and Lifelong Learning) of the German National Educational Panel Study.
- In cooperation with various Leibniz institutes, the “College for interdisciplinary Education Research” (CIDER) offers the opportunity of interdisciplinary career advancement to 30 junior scientists in educational science, psychology, economics, and sociology during their early post-doctoral stage.
- The WZB is a partner and patron of the „Berlin Interdisciplinary Education Research Network“ (BIEN) and of the Berlin Network of Labor Market Research (BeNA).
- The institute publishes the “WZBrief Bildung”. The „WZBrief Bildung“ provides concise up-to-date information about a given topic from their educational research. It is published several times a year in electronic form. It is geared towards experts and specialists working in politics, schools, organizations and the media. The authors of the „WZBrief Bildung“ are scientists conducting research on issues surrounding education and training.
- In cooperation with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, the WZB publishes the „Zukunft Bildung“ dossier (“The future of education”). Using texts, videos, and graphics, the dossier makes current educational policy debates and research results from various disciplines accessible to a broad, non-academic audience.
University of Luxembourg
At the associated partner “University of Luxembourg” is the research group „Educational Processes in Contemporary Societies“ consisting of members from two Institutes devoted to educational research. It connects social scientific perspectives on education and learning processes (educational theory, philosophy, history, and sociology). The main focus is on educational policies, systems, and processes within particular cultural, political, and socio-economic contexts. Thus, particular importance is placed on historical, cross-national, and international perspectives. Objects of study, whether in quantitative or qualitative or historical and institutional analyses, are education policies, system development, learning processes and teaching, and learning within and outside educational organizations.
Activities:
The activities of the research group include editing journals and book series, contributing to national education reports (Germany, Luxembourg), organizing international conferences, evaluation and consulting in a range of countries and advisory board membership.
RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research
The RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research is an independent and non-profit center for excellent economic research and evidence-based policy advice in Germany. The research work of the RWI is based on the latest theoretical concepts and state-of-the-art empirical methods and ranges from the individual to the level of the global economy. The institute spans five areas of competence: “Labor Markets, Education, Population”, “Health Economics”, “Climate Change and Development”, “Environment and Resources ‘ and “Macroeconomics and Public Finance”. The research groups “Micro Structure of Taxes and Transfers” and “Prosocial Behavior” complete the research profile. The “Research Data Center Ruhr at RWI” (FDZ Ruhr) provides data services and engages in research on regional disparities.arch on regional disparities.
Important work and services:
- RWI analyses the determinants of educational decisions and returns to education. In this research area, the particular focus of research is on higher education, training (vocational ecuation, lifelong learning) and the impact of education on labor market outcomes.
- RWI assesses the causal impact of reforms and policy measures in the educational sector in Germany and low-income countries.
- The institute conducts policy studies on the economics of education for public sector clients, such as ministries, the German Federal Employment Agency and the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit).
- RWI designs individual and company surveys and is involved in data collection. For example, RWI, together with the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning (DIE) and infas – Institute for Applied Social Sciences, established a longitudinal linked-employer-employee dataset on lifelong learning. Data are available for secondary use. More information.
Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education
The Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education is an institute of the University of Cologne, initiated and funded by Stiftung Mercator. Its aim is to improve language education. To achieve this objective, it researches and develops innovative concepts, measures and tools for language education. It provides regional training for prospective teachers and national training for educators in nurseries, schools and adult education, and prepares academic findings specifically for decision-makers in educational policy, administration and practice. Through its research and the academic services it provides to language education in a multilingual society, the Mercator Institute helps create more equal opportunities in the education system.
Important work and services:
Research: The Mercator Institute for Language Support and German as a Second Language researches and develops concepts, instruments and measures for language education in a variety of projects. It conducts practical and application-oriented research on current and socially relevant issues of language education, from daycare to the transition to work. Its research covers the entire breadth and complexity of linguistic education: It focuses on the chain of effects from research to the training and continuing education of specialists and teachers, the framework conditions in the various educational institutions, implementation in educational practice, and the effects on children and young people. The research focuses on linguistic learning and development processes, classroom research, and teacher training and professionalization. The project teams use both qualitative and quantitative methods and are interdisciplinary. The institute also offers research-based services.
Development: The Mercator Institute advises educational actors on the basis of scientific findings relating to development and implementation processes, e.g. curricula or for the realization of language education concepts. In doing so, its objective is to help initiate systemic changes that will allow consistent language education standards to be maintained throughout all educational stages and institutions.
Professional Development: When it comes to staff development of educators in nursery schools, schools and adult education, the Mercator Institute cooperates with institutions at a regional and national level so as to develop and implement staff development concepts. Due to time constraints and the considerable need for continuing education, educators are increasingly calling for training courses that can be adapted to their individual schedules. This is why the Mercator Institute is also developing digital learning opportunities that combine independent learning with digital materials and face-to-face classes.
Transfer: There are many different stakeholders in language education: from the organizations that run child and youth welfare services, to nurseries and schools, and to ministries and authorities at the local and state level. Through its publications and events, the Mercator Institute promotes the transfer of good practice and scientific findings to education policymakers, education authorities and the educational institutions themselves. In addition, it is available to journalists as a point of contact for topics relating to language education. Current research into topical and socially relevant questions of language education is analysed and then made available in a variety of formats – from short basic knowledge and fact checks to detailed studies and expert reports.
Promotion of young researchers: At the Mercator Institute, there are various measures to promote young researchers. These include AcadeMI, a network of young researchers who meet in a self-coordinated manner and at regular intervals to promote peer exchange at the Mercator Institute and to support each other in their own qualification. Among other things, they organize workshops that all young researchers can profitably use for their work, and they are involved in the implementation of the annual Young Researchers Conference. Within the framework of AcadeMI, some staff members have joined together to form four internal research groups dealing with the topic of multilingualism and vocabulary. In addition, there is a mentoring program.
Research Data at the Mercator Institute:
The Research Database “Lernertexte” (FD-LEX) provides educational researchers access to over 6,200 texts by students of various ages that were collected in different writing projects. Transcripts and handwritten originals as well as anonymized metadata of the participants can be used for own research projects.
Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (LIN)
Research at the LIN is dedicated to the study of brain mechanisms of learning and memory and their pathophysiological dysfunction. The unique interdisciplinary approach comprises molecular biological, cellular and systems physiological as well as behavioural and cognitive aspects of brain processes.
The institute was founded in 1992. In 2011 it moved into the new institute building. It is structured into four departments, six research groups, and five special labs.
Main research topics are:
- Interaction of attention, motivation, and learning in human behavior, both in healthy volunteers and in patients with dysfunctions in evaluation and motivation,
- Stereotactic neurosurgery and Deep Brain Stimulation,
- Systems physiology of acoustic pattern processing including language and learning plasticity in the auditory cortex,
- Discovery of novel molecular components in CNS synapses, their topological organization, and functional interplay in neuronal signaling processes.
The Research Groups are headed by young scientists. Their research is complementary to the departments and devoted to mechanisms of visual attention and plasticity, to plasticity-related molecules and signaling pathways within neurons, to Systems Biology of learning in Drosophila, and to the pathophysiology and pharmacology of cerebral ischemia.
The special labs for Electron and Laser Scanning Microscopy, Molecular Biological Techniques, Neurogenetics, Primate Neurobiology and Non- Invasive Brain Imaging provide state-of-the-art technology and know-how for the research groups and departments and work on their own third party-funded scientific projects nonetheless.
The LIN is a cornerstone of the Magdeburg science campus „Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences“ (CBBS). LIN scientists are involved in four DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centres „Neurobiology of motivated Behaviour“ and „Molecular Organisation of Cellular Communication in the Immune System“, „A Companion Technology for Cognitive Technical Systems“ and „The Active Auditory System“.
The Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology launched its own PhD program comprising the „SynAGE Graduate Program“ and the Marie Curie Initial Training Network „N-Plast“.
Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi)
The Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi), which is affiliated with the University of Bamberg, promotes longitudinal studies in educational research in Germany. To achieve this aim, LIfBi runs the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) providing fundamental, transregional, and internationally significant, research-based infrastructure for empirical educational research in Bamberg. NEPS describes and analyzes the process of educational acquisition in Germany and its effects on individual educational processes and trajectories across the entire life span. In this way, NEPS is the first long-term study in Germany providing the national and international scientific community with longitudinal data on educational trajectories and competence development from early childhood to late adulthood.
NEPS is an interdisciplinary network of research institutes, research groups, and individual scientists that pulls together the expertise of about 220 scientists from more than 30 research sites across Germany.
Important work and services:
- LIfBi runs the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The NEPS collects longitudinal data that are representative of Germany on the development of competencies, educational processes, educational decisions, and returns to education in formal, nonformal, and informal contexts throughout the whole life span.
- NEPS data are made available to the national and international scientific community in the form of Scientific Use Files that can be accessed through various innovative ways using state-of-the-art technology. Interested data users are invited to attend regular user trainings.
- NEPS data provide an empirical basis for research and offer a rich potential for analysis with regard to educational research and related disciplines (e.g., demography, educational science, economics, psychology, and sociology).
- In addition to the standard documentation material for every single Scientific Use File, the NEPS Research Data Center offers a number of supplemental information and assisting tools for handling the NEPS data.
- The Research Data Center LIfBi (RDC LIfBi) is primarily responsible for the user-friendly preparation of survey and test data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and its dissemination to the scientific community in the form of Scientific Use Files.
- Third-party funded projects by LIfBi: LIfBi continually acquires new third-party funded projects.
