The Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research

• conducts research into the production, content and appropriation of educational media for schools in its socio-cultural, political, economic and historical contexts.
• provides unique research infrastructure services that are founded in research and available on site and digitally. At the core of the Institute is its research library containing the world’s most comprehensive collection of international textbooks.
• provides transfer services based on critical research for application in national and international education practice, educational media production and education policy.

Research, research infrastructures and knowledge transfer are the threads that run throughout the GEI’s work. Flourishing in its role as a non-university institution that both conducts and facilitates research into textbooks and educational media, the Georg Eckert Institute has become an internationally recognised centre of reference in the field.

Educational media for use in schools
The condensed and canonical character of the information included in school educational media gives it key significance in academia, policy and education. Textbooks, as carriers of the knowledge and information that one generation wishes to pass on to the next, frequently find themselves at the centre of political controversy.

Digital technology is having a significant impact on education. Schools worldwide are increasingly using interactive and adaptive technologies and multimedia. Digital educational media are therefore a core area of the GEI’s work. In addition to projects exploring knowledge and its interpretation, the production, content and appropriation of media, and research on the socio-political implications of new educational technology, the Institute is also expanding its library collections accordingly and digitising its collections.

Interdisciplinary and international research
Textbook and educational media research is not an academic discipline at any university. It is, therefore, especially important for researchers of school educational media with different disciplinary perspectives to have access to an international centre where they can find and exchange relevant data, source material and information. The GEI provides exactly that in the form of its research library, digital products, publications, fellowships and visiting professor programmes and events.