Call for educational research with 8.8 million euros now open

Consortia between universities and university colleges of teacher education are now sought for joint doctoral programmes in educational research. The call for proposals “Educational innovation needs educational research” of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the Foundation for Innovation in Education (FIE) with a total amount of 8.8 million euros is aimed at universities and university colleges of teacher education. Research results are expected by the autumn of 2026. The aim of this support for doctoral candidates is that very urgent challenges for school education and social issues will be researched and that the results will then be integrated into daily school practice as well as into teacher training and continuous professional development of teachers. Applications can be submitted to the OeAD, the national education agency implementing the programme: www.oead.at/B3.

80 percent of the research funds have been reserved for the following pressing topics: “Early drop-out from education”, “Resilience of pupils”, “Non-subject-specific teaching”, “Digitisation – Distance Learning”, “Competence-oriented teaching”, “Language teaching and literacy” and “School development counselling”. The interest in the run-up to the call for proposals is high due to the great importance of the topics. 20 per cent of the funds are available for working on an “open topic”.

The establishment of cooperations in the doctorate-specific courses is also intended to promote more intensive exchange and networking between universities and university colleges of teacher education just like it happens in other countries. A total of 8 million euros is available from BMBWF funds for the cooperations for a period of three years. With an additional 800,000 euros the FIE will fund activities and measures to acquire further qualifications, internationalisation and strengthening of a peer culture. This funding can be used to employ six doctoral candidates per cooperation at the research institutions and to cover course costs (maximumof 1.15 million euros per consortium in total).

• Submission period: 3 October 2022 to 17 February 2023
• Decision on the funded consortia: June/July 2023
• Start of doctoral programmes and kick-off event: autumn of 2023
• Decision on activities to support a research community: February/March 2024
• A final conference is planned for the autumn of 2026.

Enquiries and contact:

OeAD – Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation
Mag. Ursula Hilmar
Spokesperson
+43 1 53408-270
presse@oead.at
www.oead.at