UniCredit Research Grant on Education

Grant funding over a maximum of three years for education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education in any country represented by the UniCredit banking group.

The UniCredit Foundation is the non-profit research foundation of the Italian UniCredit banking and finance group. The aims of the Foundation are to pursue social and humanitarian objectives in the care, health, environment, training and education sectors and promote and support studies and scholarship aimed at deepening knowledge of economic, financial, legal, political and social disciplines.

The UniCredit Research Grant on Education awards funding over a maximum of three years to support academic research that aims to develop new foundational knowledge on educational themes that will contribute to the improvement of education in any country within the UniCredit Group perimeter (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia).

The main goal of the programme is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education.

Preference will be given to research targeting young people in the 11-19 age group (lower and upper secondary school) and focused on:

• Tackling school dropouts.
• Assessing the effects of early tracking.
• Defining the scope for remedial education and evaluating tutoring programmes for disadvantaged children.
• Identifying appropriate orientation programmes for the school careers and the job market.
  

Welcomed are proposals demonstrating:

• Methodological diversity in answering key questions;
• Projects that utilise a wide array of research methods including, among others, quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, design-based research;
• Projects that might incorporate data from multiple and varied sources, span a sufficient length of time and/or are based on work performed closely with practitioners or community members over the duration of the project;
• Proposals submitted by multidisciplinary and diverse teams (eg by age and gender).
  

A maximum of two projects will be funded per year. Research teams are encouraged to consider and describe plans regarding the trajectories of their project’s findings, implications, and potential effects, especially how the knowledge may be shared and utilised by practitioners, policy makers, or the broader public.