Established in 1988, CIIE has long embraced its mission of developing high-quality research on key issues of lifelong and life-wide education. The centre has an international reputation as an excellent context to research, innovate, and inspire change in education with and for educational communities. CIIE is also extremely well-known for its top-quality doctoral programme in Education Sciences, PDCE.

For 2025-2029, CIIE will host around 70 PhD full members, including professors and lecturers from FPCEUP, members from other HEIs and full-time researchers and postdoctoral research fellows. CIIE also engages 80 associate members, most of whom are full and part-time PhD students. PhD students, emerging and senior researchers all come together in small face-to-face collectives of research-in-the-making, the research communities of practice, CoPIn. CoPIns collaborate in large Research Groups (RGs) that, like neighbouring trees in a rhizomatic network, foster expansive learning and transformative agency within CIIE:

• PITE - Politics, Inequalities and Transformative Education
• DJusT - Diversity, Social Justice and Territories
• SCInTE(a)+Democracy - School, Curriculum, Innovation, Teacher Education plus Democracy

CIIE activities in CoPIns and RGs will be guided by thematic axes that rest on the centre's current inter/national leadership in educational research and intervention, and address significant contemporary challenges and inequalities: (i) Education and democracy, (ii) Equity, inclusion and social justice, (iii) Culture, arts and quality education, (iv) Participation, knowledge sharing, and co-creation, and (v) Just transitions for alternative futures: digital, climatic and societal. CIIE will continue to further research that exposes the social inequalities that pervade educational policies and practices, and advocating for the recognition of rights to access quality formal and non-formal education and the possibility to imagine alternative futures.

For 2025-2029, CIIE continues for further state-of-the-art research that addresses educational and societal challenges while advocating for a just internationalisation - as in the recent collaborative research line on Artificial "Intelligence"; engaging citizens in the co-design of 'societal challenge-driven research' through the collaborative work of two observatories, OBVIE and ODEC, and the recently created LabDERE; sustain an international leadership on the advanced training of young researchers and mentoring of researchers' careers; encourage public, reasoned debate on educational issues; and reinforce its Open Science strategy by publishing open-access outputs and managing two diamond open-access scholarly international publications: Educação, Sociedade & Culturas and Scopus JSSE-Journal of Social Science Education.



About CIIE research groups

PITE – Policy, Inequalities and Transformative Education | Coord. Pedro D. Ferreira
PITE produces knowledge that is recognised nationally and internationally, particularly in these overarching themes: i) Policy analysis and its impacts –  this theme focuses on analysing education policies at the various levels, their articulation with social, economic and political issues, and their impacts on social inclusion, equality and well-being; ii) Research on participation processes and experiences – this theme explores participation processes and experiences in multiple contexts, including formal and non-formal education, community development, social movements and broadly civic and political contexts, and their potential for promoting learning, empowerment and social transformation, particularly regarding deprived groups and territories; iii) Work and education – this theme investigates the transformations of work, the connections between education (formal, non-formal and informal), training and work, for young people and adults, considering their experiences and trajectories, while looking at political, cultural and technological transformations and at how they produce and/or reproduce social and educational in/justice in contemporary societies; iv) Participatory methodologies, co-creation and methodological innovation –  this theme emphasises the use of participatory methodologies situated processes of research and knowledge construction and co-creation involving partners, policy-makers, and citizens (including children, young people, adults and older adults and/or groups in vulnerable positions). It explores and experiments with diverse participatory formats, including digital and artistic practices and cultures, for the construction of relevant alternative ways of knowing and of significant and empowering educational contexts

DJusT – Diversity, Social Justice and Territories | Coord. Sofia Marques da Silva
DJusT members, using a variety of research designs, contribute significantly to the promotion of quality knowledge in the field of education (formal, vocational and non-formal) through the coordination of nationally and internationally funded projects and publications, focusing on diversity, social justice and territory, and have consolidated lines of research such as the following: educational pathways and participation of young people from low-density regions; early leaving from education and training and the promotion of equity and educational success; children's voices, childhood and families; inclusive education, especially through intercultural education, digital literacy and the arts; cultural heritage and place-based education; quality education, promising approaches and indicators of resilient schools and communities; experiential knowledge and development of education professionals working with diverse populations, from early childhood to adult education, including teachers, vocational trainers or sign language interpreters; underrepresentation of groups such as immigrant, minorities, refugees, first-generation students and vocational students, especially in higher education; deaf and bilingual education. The research contexts include schools, ranging from lower to upper secondary levels, vocational schools and training centres, universities, rural communities, migrant and youth associations, and municipalities, as well as digital contexts and social networks. The participants were mainly young people and children, as well as school headmasters, teachers, families, community representatives, and policymakers.

SCInTE(a)+Democracy – Schooling, Curriculum, Teacher Education, Innovation + Democracy | Coord. Amélia Lopes
SCInTE(a)+Democracy is focused on the challenges of schooling and democracy, aiming to promote democratic school education and social inclusion, focusing on school governance; teacher education and professional development; social justice, curriculum and policies of assessment; (digital) literacies; pedagogical innovation. It takes an approach that centres on the social construction of reality, and the agency of the actors involved: teachers, staff, pupils, families and communities. It adopts, theoretically, an ecological, critical and participatory perspective, and methodologically a pluralist stance with an emphasis on mixed methods, narrative and ethnographic studies, and action research. Pressing issues will be addressed in 2025-2029 through current and future funded projects: Attractiveness of teaching and reconfiguration of training; Pedagogical and curricular responses to migration; School autonomy and centralisation/municipalisation of education; Digital technologies and IA in education; School governance, policies of assessment and social justice; Pedagogical differentiation, curricular flexibility, innovation and new (digital) school environments; Identity formation, learning and students' pathways.