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It is the leading question of the project, to what extent and under which conditions new approaches in firms' training and working-time policies are able to foster Life-Long-Learning.

Franziska Scheier’s doctoral project examines the role of company-level employee representatives by consideration of employees’ interests formerly neglected in work policies (weak employees), i.e. employees taking care of children or other family members, low-skilled or unskilled workers, severely handicapped persons, and apprentices.

Overtime and certain components of remuneration can be credited in long-term working-time accounts and then drawn down at a later point. The basic idea is to save up time for use in a later phase of working life. For the company, long-term working-time accounts make for flexibility; for the employee, they offer the opportunity to improve the distribution of occupational and nonoccupational demands across the course of life. However, the range of ways for companies to implement this instrument is extraordinarily broad, as is the range of possibilities for employees to use it.

European declarations aim to establish an enhanced European skill formation area that will strengthen the EU’s global competitiveness. Yet the efforts of decisionmakers to achieve the diverse goals codified in the Bologna (higher education) and Copenhagen (vocational training) declarations imply the reform or even restructuring of national educational systems, which resist transformative change. Focusing on shifting tensions between general and vocational skill formation systems in France and Germany, this project charts changes in the competition between the differentially institutionalized organizational fields of general and vocational education.

How have nation-states, churches, and philanthropists historically responded to disability and deviance in Europe and North America? Age-old strategies of care, compensation, and rehabilitation will be contrasted with contemporary appeals to equal opportunities, rights, and participation (inclusion). Comparative studies of educational system development and disability policy reform show the extent to which these differing ideals have been reached in the Atlantic world since the mid-1800s. Special education offers a vital but neglected field to examine the trade-offs between principles of merit and equality and the resulting educational and social inequalities.

This cross-nationally comparative project for the OECD examines the state of knowledge concerning transitions of youth and young adults with disabilities beyond secondary education in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. Focusing first on access to vocational training, higher education, and employment, the study identifies the results of educational and social policies and local practices, asking how educational quality and equality can be strengthened for this disadvantaged group. Secondly, the project investigates transition patterns within tertiary education and on to employment in order to build a catalog of factors that facilitate or hinder successful transitions, which will be used to guide a larger cross-national longitudinal study.

The working title of Lisa Pfahl's dissertation is „Special School-Leavers Transitioning from School to Work. Discursive and Biographical Constructions of Learning Disability”. This research project reconstructs how discursive knowledge of disability contributed to institutionalisation of educational inequality. Special schools also shape the interactive constitution of the self and biographical action. At the center of this inquiry is how — and if — individuals with less education achieve agency in the German educational system. The educational system is conceptualized as an instance of subjectivation, which I analyze in a twofold manner. Firstly, I recount the discourses of academic special education theorists and practitioners.

Aim of the project was a state-of-the-art report on the mechanisms of educational inequalities in the German school system. The report gives an overview in what we know about educational inequalities in terms of social origin, migration background and gender and identifies areas of future research.

Global challenges are said to be effectively tackled by knowledge-based societies. This turns science cooperation and their funding mechanisms into viable instruments for sustainable development. However, research shows that science cooperation does not always work out well, especially when structured by persistent North-South asymmetries. During the process of collaborative research projects such asymmetries can affect the agenda-setting, the financing mechanisms and the division of labour.

The Berlin research consortium “Autonomy despite Multi-morbidity in Old Age” (¬ ama) conducts research aimed at improving the quality of life of older people. A central part of its work is to analyse resources for older people suffering from multiple illnesses, disabilities or impaired function to maintain their independence and cope with everyday life.
The interdisciplinary research project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the programme “Health in Old Age” and will initially run for three years (2008–2010).