Ellinogermaniki Agogi
Ellinogermaniki Agogi (EA) is an educational organization of private law, officially recognized by the state. Established in 1995, the Research and Development Department of EA provides the test bed for research applications for the design, development and implementation of the research activities in education. The R&D Department acts therefore as an interface between the pedagogical research, the technological innovation and the school community. It focuses on the design, implementation and support of pedagogical and technological innovations in educational practice, both through internal research as well as through collaborations with numerous educational, research and commercial institutions in Europe and the world. EA is an institutional member of EDEN (European Distance Education Network), of STEDE (Science Teacher Education Development in Europe) and of ECSITE (European Network of Science Centres and Museums) network.
R&D Department currently employs 20 people, 17 full time researchers (4 PhD level, 13 MSc), 1 web developer and 2 persons in financial administration, and focuses on the following areas:
- Development of methodologies and empirical classroom-based research to investigate processes of learning and knowledge acquisition in various subject matter areas (physics, mathematics, biology, history, etc.);
- Comparative research on educational policy at national and European level;
- Development of a model of and support for School innovation
- Design and implementation of short- and long-term professional development of teachers in various thematic axes, e.g. intercultural competencies, bullying, parental engagement, digital skills, etc.
- Cooperation and collaboration with Universities, research centers, museums and private companies for the development and testing of educational material and software;
- Design of technology-supported learning environments.
EA has a very strong vision-generated interest and rich research and development activity in the fields of formal and informal learning combined with innovative technical solutions, and game-based education, aiming to empower learners and teachers to thrive in the landscape of unprecedented challenges and opportunities in the 21st century. Under this approach, EA has taken up the challenge to embed pedagogical practice that effectively uses ICTs in every classroom driving up student academic outcomes across the school.
Moreover, a large range of previous projects were focused on developing and implementing technological tools which leverage both digital science repositories and informal learning. Its work in EU projects over the last 15 years has established EA as a leading pioneer in innovative approaches to school education. Since its establishment, the R&D Department has coordinated and supported the participation of EA, either as coordinator or as partner, in more than 120 national and international collaborative research projects and networks (H2020, eContentPlus, ICT-PSP, SiS in FP7 and FP6, IST in FP5 and ICT in FP6, LLP-ICT, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus+), the majority of which have been concerned with the fields of science and new technologies in education.