Innovation, Diversity and Educational Approaches

The alliance research group has been interdisciplinary with education researchers from both the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University. The research focus of the alliance research group is therefore also interdisciplinary and bundles expertise from the scientific (sub) disciplines 'educational sciences' and 'educational sociology'. From an educational perspective, research on education innovation and implementation is the main research line for both the VUB and the UGent partner (Educational Sciences and Educational Studies, respectively). From a sociological angle, the analysis of social inequality and exclusion at all levels of the education system is a central research focus. Both within the VUB (Department of Political Sciences) and UGent (Department of Sociology) are several research projects in which exclusion mechanisms in and outside education are central. The common research line relates to the relationship between inequality and education renewal. Structural cooperation between the various research entities in the form of an alliance research group has the added value that existing expertise within these diverse subdomains can be combined and the relationship between educational inequality education renewal can be interdisciplinarily approached. For Flanders, this is a unique combination, and also internationally, research into inequality in education is still approached in particular unidisciplinary. The joint research line of the Alliance Research Group includes research into inequality and the role of educational innovation in counteracting micro-, meso- and macro-level inequality mechanisms.