Well-founded knowledge about developments of people and societies is an important basis for decisions in daily life, in politics, and economics. In research about education and work, researchers investigate social mechanisms in learning, education and work processes and investigate the manifold consequences for people, organisations and societies empirically and analytically. They include hypothesis-testing, quantitative and hypothesis-generating qualitative methods.

Researchers in this research area empirically analyse approaches to education, learning behaviours at schools and universities, in families and companies, the functioning of competence acquisition as well as the consequences and returns of education and competence development from childhood to adulthood. International comparative studies add to a deeper understanding in this respect. In quantitative and qualitative studies, researchers of the BRIDGES NETWORK analyse how learners experience and shape their biographical educational processes in formal, non-formal and informal learning arrangements.

Researchers in the subarea of organisations and the labour market focus on work activities and new forms of work. They examine the conditions under which work and structural changes function, both at the societal level (labour markets, economic and social policy, migration, industrial relations or occupational structures), at the organisational level (company, work organisation or personnel development and structures) and at the level of people (individual employment histories, qualification development and demands through work or career and career success).