Educational Research and Social Inequality

Education functions as one of the frameworks for negotiating pressing social issues, such as societal participation, the future, and technological developments. Often, opinions and recommendations articulated in this context are closely linked to other political areas—such as equality, migration, work, health, or new media. Educational debates and concepts thus create powerful images of belonging and participation, while also constructing specific educational infrastructures.

A core focus of investigation lies in the concrete educational and knowledge practices of actors and their relationship to educational infrastructures, resources, goods, spaces, and technologies. These terms are intentionally chosen because they hold significant cultural analytical potential in the context of education and align with perspectives from gender studies. They emerge through their concrete use and appropriation in everyday life. Education is thus understood as a figurational network in which people, infrastructures, resources, goods, spaces, and technologies are relationally interconnected. Particularly of interest here are the symbolic and material orders and economies within which this ongoing process of connecting takes place. Rather than assuming and affirming a pre-defined field of educational research, the aim is to consistently make visibile how this field is continually reconstituted through educational practices, including the practices of researching education itself.