The research environment Education and Democracy consists of around 50 researchers in many different research teams concentrated around different research projects but also collaborating around different areas like literacy, communication and citizenship, professional responsibility and education for sustainability. The historical and disciplinary basis of the research environment is within educational research and most of the members are educational researchers, but there are also sociologists and sport researchers and collaborations within projects with researchers from political science, informatics, medicine (psychiatry). The research has grown out from curriculum theory and didactics in educational research but since many years and today there are also research going on within philosophy of education, political philosophy and research on educational history and politics.
Most of the research projects are financed by the National Research Council and especially its Committe on Educational Research. There are five professors, four associate professors (three of them also postdocs), two other postdocs of education within the environment and around fifteen senior lecturers and twenty doctorate students.
The researchers are related to many international research networks and many guest professors have worked within and together with researchers from the environement. Up to now five honorary doctors, closely related to the research environment, have been appointed: Cleo Cherryholmes from Michigan University 2000, Lars Lövlie from the University of Oslo 2003, Gert Biesta from Stirling university 2006, Catherine Odora Hoppers from University of Pretoria in 2008 and David Hansen from Teachers College, Columbiia University, New York in 2012.
The research environment is also closely connected to the publishing of the journal Education & Democracy – journal of didactics and educational policy in 2012 with its 21 volume and publishing the journal three times each year. The journal is also to be found on open access.
