• Research Projects

    RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTION PROJECTS

    Over the years many projects of research and intervention in education (funded by a variety of European and national funds as well as the University of Athens).

    Large-scale projects:

    • Education and Care of Preschool-age Children (ppps.ecd.uoa.gr): Funded by the Ministry of the Interior with the purpose of contributing to the educational programmes of day-care centres. An adjustment of the  German Programme “Bridging Diversity – An Early Childhood Curriculum” successfully implemented in Berlin for children  aged 0-6 years, it focused upon collaboration of families with the day-care centres.
    • Education of Muslim Children (http://www.museduc.gr/el). Funded by the Ministry of Education for the Muslim minority of Thrace, the northeastern part of Greece. Since its beginnings in 1997 and has significantly reorganized the Greek-language curriculum of the Muslim minority schools.
    • Curing the Limbo: From apathy to active citizenship—Empowering refugees and migrants in limbo state to ignite housing affordability: In partnership with the City of Athens as well as the NGOs Catholic Relief Services (IRC) and CARITAS/Hellas, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the civil society platform SynAthina,  this relatively recent project is funded by Urban Innovative Action, a European Regional Development Fund for three years.  The project was launched on Nov. 1st, 2017 with the aim of empowering refugees who have been granted asylum to escape their state of “limbo”.  More particularly, it allows them to address various social needs in exchange of affordable housing.  An “Exit Limbo Lab”  offers  classes on Greek and English, ICTs, audio-visual expression and creativity as well as services of mediation, psychosocial support, and legal aid, with the aim of empowering beneficiaries to  enter the labour market. Thalia Dragonas is coordinating the project on behalf of the DECE, aided by Evangelia Kourti from  the MA programme “Information and Communication Technologies in Education”, Alexandra Androussou from the M.A. programme “Education and Human Rights”,  and Charalambos Poulopoulos  from the M.Sc. Programme “Counselling Psychology and Counselling in Education, Health and Work Settings”.

    Representative examples of research projects (according to their source of funding):

    University of Athens Research Fund:

    Low-budget projects of the Kapodistrias Programme allotted to individual members of the academic staff (e.g. Victimizing in the school environment.  Educational choices and social strategies.  Social class, ethnic origin and gender in school choices.  Acquisition of Greek as a first and a second language. Parent’s conceptions about children’s development. Theatrical expression of scientific ideas).

    Higher funding projects only at the Department level. They included subprojects on the evaluation of the activities of the DECE and the construction of its website, but also topics such as The transition from experiential to school knowledge in the kindergarten:  data from communicative practices in the classroom.

     Competitive programmes of the Ministry of Education and the European Union:

    • Herakleitos Ph.D. Scholarships (e.g. Linguistic coding of the conceptual domain of motion: literal and non-literal language of Greek-speaking children and adults).
    • Pythagoras Post-doctoral Research Programmes (Vocational employment of graduates with disabilities from the Education Faculties of the University of Athens; Early language development in Greek:  from prelinguistic vocalization to the first words and the emergence of grammar). 

    University of Athens Programs across schools and faculties,

    e.g. Vocational Training, Open Courses and Enterpreneuship.

     Programs of state institutions

    e.g. the District Administration of the State of Attica, for the equipping of the FECE’s laboratories.