European research policies have become increasingly visible since the 1980s. Its genesis can be traced back to the launch of the European Framework Programmes (FP’s) in 1984 and it got further momentum with the establishment of the so-called European Research Area (ERA) in 2000. The FP’s have been the privileged instrument of the ERA to boost European research collaboration (Ackers, 2008; Heilbron, 2014) and to find common solutions for common problems or – in the context of evidence-based policy-making – to identify ‘what works’ (Biesta, 2007). By defining targets and research priorities for Member-States, the European Commission, as a supranational regulatory body, plays an important role in the development of a pluri-scalar governance of research (Dale 2007; Lingard & Rawolle, 2011). Educational research has been funded since 1994, although the structure and implications of the European Educational Research Area are still unclear (Lawn, 2002). The aim of this contribution is to analyse the content and shape of European educational research through examining European research projects funded in the field of education from 1994 to 2013 (FP4 to FP7). Regarding the content, I collected calls for Social Sciences and Humanities and analysed the aims and priorities for research. Further, through CORDIS databases, I collected educational research projects (n=94) and analysed their descriptions in order to shed light on projects` topics, theoretical approach, methodology and range of analysis. Concerning the shape, I used social network analysis (Scott, 2013) in order to investigate the participation of research organisations (n=857) against the backdrop of their country affiliations. Preliminary results show that particular issues are clearly represented in each FP confirming that educational research projects are strongly connected to FP’s research priorities. For theory and methodology, data shows a shift over time from more specific questions in the field of education to a more multidisciplinary social sciences’ perspective based on a diversified set of theoretical and methodological tools. I argue that this is explained by an incremental enlargement of the composition of the research teams and the growing importance of transnational analyses (instead of mere country comparisons). Finally, the three largest national systems in Europe (the UK, Germany and France) are greatly represented indicating that the size of the research systems plays an important role in integrating the European Educational Research Area.
