Within the framework of the state program 'Children's Rights Schools NRW' (Kinderrechteschulen NRW)—a collaborative initiative of the Ministry for School and Education of North Rhine-Westphalia, UNICEF Germany, and the Quality and Support Agency – State Institute for Schools (QUA-LiS NRW)—our research at the University of Wuppertal examines the development of democratic orientations and children's rights-related attitudes during primary‑school years, focusing on the role of the school as a space for learning and experience.
Our research focus centres on questions such as:
- How do children experience participation?
- How do their conceptions of fairness, co‑decision‑making, and self‑efficacy evolve?
Under which school‑related conditions can these developments be most strongly promoted?
In addition, we analyze shifts in the attitudes and professional orientations of the pedagogical staff over the course of the program.The basis of the study consists of standardized, age‑appropriate surveys administered to children in grades 1‑4 as well as to teachers and specialists at two measurement points.
Ultimately, this project aims to provide deeper empirical insights into the processes of early childhood democratic education and to derive evidence-based implications for fostering a children's rights-oriented school culture.
The research project VOICES investigates how democratic values develop in primary‑school children and what role school experiences play in this process.Central to the project is the question of to what extent the satisfaction of basic children’s needs in everyday school life—such as belonging, support, and fair treatment—correlates with the development of democratic values. In collaboration with university students, standardized questionnaires are administered to pupils in the 3rd and 4th grades at primary schools throughout North‑Rhine Westphalia. The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of the conditions for the development of democratic values in childhood and thus make a contribution to empirical education and socialisation research.
VOICES is a collaborative project between Anne Kosubek (Primary School Pedagogical Research Group), Fabian Schächt (Educational Diagnostics Group) and Florian Monstadt (Empirical Educational Research Group).
Within the framework of this research project we examine the educational and occupational trajectories of adults with low formal qualifications and the factors that influence their participation in further training. The focus is on different groups of low-skilled adults, including people who have not completed vocational training and people with a migration and refugee background. The aim is to make typical patterns of education and employment visible and to identify both individual and structural conditions that shape educational decisions in adulthood. The study is based on secondary analyses of large‑scale data sets from education and labour‑market research (including AES, SOEP and IAB-BAMF-SOEP). The results are intended to contribute to a better understanding of the barriers and potentials of participation in continuing education and to derive target group-specific recommendations for action.
Project funding: German Institute for Adult Education (DIE).
Other project team members: Dr Benjamin Schimke (operational management) and Florian Monstadt
Duration: 1/2026 - 10/2026
In this research project, we are investigating how deviant behaviour of pupils arises in the classroom and develops over time in the interplay of school interactions. The core focus lies on the processes that unfold between pupils and teachers and on the question of how everyday interaction patterns can, in the long run, give rise to problematic developmental trajectories or “deviant careers. To investigate this, classroom observations and qualitative interviews with both students and educators are conducted at Brazilian primary schools. The longitudinal nature of the project aims to track developmental dynamics and change processes over several years. The project will run for three years.
Project funding: CAPES Brazil
Other project staff: ELIANA DE SOUSA ALENCAR MARQUES (administrative project manager in Brazil), Thais Lima (doctoral student), Carlos Eduardo Barbosa (Master's student), Mariana Freitas (BA student)
Duration: 2025 - 2028
For teachers, pupils and their guardians, starting school is a significant transition into a new system - with new requirements, expectations and rules in which safe behaviour often has to be learnt first. In the KINO project we focus on how teachers and pupils co‑construct, perceive, and enact school order in daily classroom practice. With the results of our project, we want to support teachers in creating a child-appropriate and solution-orientated classroom environment.
(Claudia Schuchart & Doris Bühler-Niederberger)
PhD students: Leon Dittmann & Jennifer Adomat
(Breiwe)
Funding: The "RAISE" project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space and the European Union via the European Social Fund Plus (ESF Plus) as part of the "Integration through Education" programme (FKZ 66INT11202, duration: 2024-2027).
Empirical analyses show that schools are also involved in racist structures and the (re)production of racism-relevant differentiations, which limits inclusion success and educational opportunities. For this reason, the BMBF-funded joint project RAISE aims to contribute to gaining knowledge about the conditions, possibilities and limitations of racism-critical staff and organizational development within schools, ultimately enhancing systemic participation for all students within a migration-led society.
Under the leadership of the coordinating institution at the University of Siegen, this research-practice partnership specifies a model of professional racism-critical competence. This model serves as the foundation for designing a practice-oriented application (app) for teachers. This app enables teachers to diagnose their own level of competence and offers automated personal feedback with individually customised information modules and reflection impulses for self-directed competence development. It also contains diversity-sensitive didactic expertise and spaces for networked empowerment and power sharing.
To establish the foundational functions of the app, the partner KiTma e.V. is analysing the requirements for professionalisation that is critical of racism from the field of anti-discrimination work and creating materials. After being trialled at partner schools, the app will be published as a free skills development tool.
In order to develop additional possibilities for anchoring research-based racism-critical school development goals in school system guidelines and institutions, the Bergische Universität Wuppertal partner is analysing state-specific school guidelines and offers, including school development counselling. These goals, with their regulatory function, provide both school development counselling in the state and the structurally grounded impulses for the implementation of important aspects of racism criticism.
(Schuchart / Bühler-Niederberger)
Funding: BMBF as part of the "Migration and Social Change" programme (100323589, duration: 2018-2021)
Advancement as integration: A challenge for second-chance education institutions. The project investigates the extent to which second-chance institutions adapt their requirements, expectations, attitudes, discourses and teaching practices - in short, their "school culture" - to a changed composition of their student body. To this end, it examines the following questions: (1) With what individual attitudes and expectations of success do students with a migrant background, who make up a rapidly growing proportion of the student body, attend these institutions? (2) To what extent do these individual attitudes define a "student culture", i.e. a certain "working alliance" entered into by the student body as a whole with the teaching staff as well as rules that apply among the students with regard to the meaning of school and performance? (3) What fit is achieved between (individual) student attitudes, (collective) student culture and (institutional) school culture and to what extent does this enable students to realise their ambitions? The aim is to contribute to research into the significance of expectations of success and ambitions, which are central in the context of migration. The aim is to clarify the challenges faced by educational institutions - especially those in second-chance education - and the opportunities they have to fulfil them.
(Bühler-Niederberger / Schuchart)
Funding: ZEFFT University of Wuppertal. Duration: 06/2017-03/2018
The subject of the preliminary study is the diagnosis of behavioural disorders in primary school pupils that impair learning behaviour at school;specifically, we concentrate on diagnoses initiated by the school or within its immediate environment. We are interested in the social process that such diagnoses represent. What is meant by this is that such diagnoses do not represent a simple and inevitable labelling of a condition that is always already clear. Rather, relevant bodies of knowledge are interpreted and negotiated and their application is influenced by characteristics of people, situations and interactions.
(Buehler-Niederberger, D., Imbusch, P., Schuchart, C. & Westerfeld, K.)
Funding: BMBF Social Sciences/Education Sciences in the programme "Coherence in Teacher Education / Teacher Education Quality Campaign" Duration 2015 - 2016
(Schuchart, C. & Buchwald, P.)
Funding: BMBF Framework of the programme "Empirical Educational Research" - Call for proposals "Equal Opportunities and Participation, Social Change and Strategies of Support (01JC1109) Duration 2012 - 2015
(Schneider, K., Schuchart, C. & Weishaupt, H.)
Funding: DFG Duration 01.03.2008 - 28.02.2011
An empirical analysis for the cities of Wuppertal and Solingen before and after the new NRW school law came into force
(Schuchart, C.)
Funding: DFG (GZ SCHU 2399/1-1) Duration 01-10.2007 to 30.09.2010
