eduLIFE

Advanced Grants are the highest grants awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) for projects by outstanding creative researchers. What are the conditions for these high-calibre Advanced Grants?
The EU's ERC Advanced Grants support applicants who must be exceptional leaders in their field due to the originality and significance of their research contributions and who are seeking long-term funding for a ground-breaking, ambitious project. Successful applicants must therefore have an outstanding track record of at least 10 years of significant research achievements. In 2010, Professor Blossfeld's eduLIFE research proposal at the University of Bamberg was awarded a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros for a period of five years. The eduLIFE project was the first ERC Advanced Grant in sociology in Germany and started at the University of Bamberg in 2011. After Prof Blossfeld accepted a chair at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence 2012-2017, his eduLIFE project team was relocated to the EUI.

What was unique about your ERC Advanced Grant project eduLIFE?
In modern knowledge-based economies, education has become a lifelong process in which individuals acquire skills and competences in formal, non-formal and informal learning environments, not only in primary and secondary schools or tertiary education institutions, but also before school (e.g., in crèches and kindergartens) and throughout later life (e.g. lifelong learning, education of very old people). The aim of the eduLIFE project was to investigate how the educational careers of individuals in different societies develop over the life course and to relate these trajectories to family background, the structure of educational institutions, workplaces and private life events. The project pursued an explicit life course perspective, utilised cross-national comparative research designs and used the best longitudinal data sets to study educational processes in modern societies. Prof. Blossfeld, the Principal Investigator (PI), organised a cross-national research team of PhD students, advanced postdocs and senior researchers from 20 countries and from disciplines ranging from sociology, psychology and economics to education. They contributed comparable country-specific longitudinal analyses to the eduLIFE research project. Wherever possible, these detailed country studies were supplemented by more standardised cross-national studies. By comparing the results from different countries, the eduLIFE project was able to demonstrate the generalisability of the country-specific results and identify important differences between societies in terms of their educational institutions and national context.

What were the specific aims of your project?
In order to analyze education as a lifelong process, research work was structured into four life course phases, each focusing on a consequential stage of the educational career (see aims and result of eduLIFE(391.5 KB)): 

1. Childcare, Early Education and Social Inequality. In 2014-2015, eduLIFE analysed access to early childhood education and care facilities, the quality of pre-school education and the short- and long-term impact of early childhood education and care on people from different social backgrounds.
2. Models of Secondary Education and Social Inequality. In 2013-2014, eduLIFE analysed educational differentiation in secondary school and the short- and long-term consequences with regard to social inequality, competences, achievement and educational certificates.
3. Gender, Education and Employment. In 2012-2013, eduLIFE studied the educational trajectories and their consequences for gender-specific differences in the transition from school to working life.
4. Adult Learning. 2011-2012, eduLIFE compared different models of lifelong learning and their impact on the educational trajectories of adults and on other (economic and non-economic) outcomes over the life course. 

The results of the eduLIFE project have been published in four books by Edward Elgar Publishing (in the eduLIFE Lifelong Learning Series) and in a large number of articles in competitive, peer-reviewed journals (see aims and result of eduLIFE(391.5 KB)). These findings have been presented at major international conferences, workshops and invited lectures worldwide. The four comprehensive volumes have been complemented by a book that can serve as a compendium of the main methodological challenges, solutions and achievements in the field of longitudinal research, which were also brought together in the development of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) (see aims and result of eduLIFE(391.5 KB)).

The ERC emphasises its bottom-up approach that ensures that funds flow into new and promising areas of research with a greater degree of flexibility. How would you describe the research design of your project eduLIFE?
At the beginning of the 2010s, empirical educational research was still predominantly based on cross-sectional studies (e.g. PISA, PIRLS or PIAAC). These studies only represent snapshots of pupils and employees at a certain point in their educational careers. Successive snapshots in a series of such cross-sectional surveys illustrate the changes in the structure as a whole. However, they do not show the changing (and sometimes unchanged) competences of individuals over the course of their educational careers. Panel data, where the characteristics of the same individuals are measured several times over time, can be used to describe and analyse these patterns of change over the life course. They are particularly useful for understanding the extent and regularity of change in groups defined by different characteristics such as social background, gender or ethnicity, or by exposure to certain critical experiences over the life course. The eduLIFE project has used cross-national longitudinal data, including NEPS data, to try to do just that.

Researchers from all over the world apply for ERC funding and it is famous for being very competitive. What inspired you to submit an application?
From 2006-2012, Professor Blossfeld was the PI of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) at the University of Bamberg. The NEPS was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from 2008-2012 with an initial grant of more than 73 million euros. The aim of the NEPS, which since 2014 is based at the new Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) in Bamberg, was to collect high-quality retrospective and panel data on educational trajectories and skills development and to create innovative instruments (questionnaires, repeated skills tests, etc.) on pre-school education, the various stages of the general education system and transitions within the education and vocational training system, as well as participation in higher education and lifelong learning into old age. As the NEPS was only ever a longitudinal data collection project, the analysis of the NEPS data was not funded by the BMBF. Professor Blossfeld therefore wrote an application for an Advanced Grant to the European Research Council (ERC) in 2010.