Aims and Scope

How can children be optimally supported in their individual development? How do children with specific risks are affected in their educational success, e.g. with learning disabilities, ADHD, or socio-economic or socio-cultural factors? How do educators in kindergarten and school work with heterogeneous groups of children, and how do they manage to meet children’s individual needs? Which educational interventions and methods are effective to foster children’s cognitive and social development?

The main goal of research at the IDeA Center is the empirical investigation of children from toddlerhood kindergarten and elementary school. Specifically, we focus on children that have a specific risk for academic failure, e.g., because of (neuro-)cognitive deficits of because of social factors as a migration background of low socio-economic status. IDeA investigates developmental processes of these children and contributes to finding learning environments that can deal adaptively with children in heterogeneous groups.

The innovative objective of the IDeA Center rests on the combination of longitudinal developmental research with experimental studies on educational interventions within different institutional settings. IDeA incorporates various research methods, ranging from surveys, cognitive ability tests, and observational measures to the application of different neuropsychological procedures such as EEG, fMRI, eye-tracking, and fNIRS.