The Centre for Research and Innovation in Education (inED) is a research center of the Porto Polytechnic School of Education (SE). The centre applies the strategic vision and mission of that institution in teaching, in education and in social intervention, searching excellence in the preparation of citizens and professionals in scientific, technical, artistic, pedagogical and ethical levels, in the confluence of initial and in-service training, in research, in extension and services to the community and in internationalization (article 1º, number 3, Statutes of the School of Education, administrative order nº 15275/2014, 16th of December).
Therefore, inED established several goals: to promote research and innovation projects; to promote collaboration between different areas of knowledge in the SE; to promote collaboration between the SE and other entities, national and international; and to be a research unit recognized by the scientific community (article 2º, inED Regulations).
inED builds its identity in the assumption that Education is a central process in human lives, both for individuals and for societies. As a crucial and extensive process, that occurs since the first years, and through the life cycle, in a diversity of situations and contexts, Education has been the object of attention of researchers, professionals, politic deciders and general society., Education, being a complex, culturally embedded process, must be understood as a multifaceted process whose study encompasses multiple scientific areas and perspectives, as we can see in the multidisciplinary constitution of inED.
The inED intends to contribute to the construction, dissemination, and sustainability of declarative, procedural and situational knowledge in Education Sciences specifically in four areas: Teacher Education &Training; Special Education and Inclusion; Culture, Art, and Education; Society Challenges and Education.
Aware of the competitivity that affects all areas, and notably higher education, inED assumes its identity as a research center of the polytechnic system to obtain recognition from the public, organizations, and institutions with whom it celebrates protocols and partnerships, therefore providing the research field where inED’s researchers can develop their projects, implementing and supervising practices and policies in the four study areas.
We consider inED as a structure that builds its identity in the confluence between real contexts and the scientific community, represented by the metaphor of communicating vases between participation at the national and international level, between innovation and dissemination of that innovation, between theory and practice.
Our vision is implemented via the following approaches:
(i) Connection with the contexts of professional practice ( promoting an interface between research and practice and ascribing meaning and utility to the research outcome);
(ii) Internationalization (expanding to other institutions and networks the connections that the researchers have already developed);
(iii) Linking research and education/training (intensifying the study of formative processes, according to different research paradigms in the study of education, involving students of the SE, from bachelor and master programs, and in-service training, in the research process);
(iv) Identity and permeability of research field (reinforcing the identity and research outputs in the four thematic areas, and especially Teacher Education and Training because of its pivotal role in the institution and region, and developing trans-thematic research initiatives around educational problems and challenges).
