The emerging of Organizational Education challenges both: It challenges education as an academic discipline and discourse which traditionally focuses on (the learning and education of) individuals but not on (the learning and education of) organizations. But it also challenges organizations, especially the organizations outside of the usual field of educational practice, which usually focus on their specific product but not on their own learning, especially not on their learning as social systems, cooperating communities and all in all human (even if not always humane) entities. Last not least it challenges the people in between, e.g. university students of Organizational Education programs.

An academic program on Organizational Education has to relate to all three: It must link Organizational Education to the conceptual roots, theoretic models and empiric findings of the academic discipline „Education“ and of the wider academic discourse on education and learning. And it must win organizations (also such with non-educational purposes, e.g. business companies) to open themselves for educational perspectives. Last but not least the academic program has to empower the students by giving them the possibility to link education and organization in a self-determined research and/or developmental praxis.

The paper will discuss student research-(and development-) projects within an university’s master program on „Organisationspädagogik“ (Organizational Education) as chances for all three sides, for the organizations which open up for such a student project, for the university, especially for the institute which administrates this program, and last but not least for the participating students themselves.

The study here proposed for presentation asks how the participating organizations and students intertwine within the single (research and/or development) projects and if therein the specific (Organizational Education) perspective of the academic program gets some relevance.

Regarding the organizations the study is framed by neo-institutionalist, culture theory and practice theory models. The neo-institutionalist model makes it possible to understand the organization’s permission to and go for the student’s inside activity as an legitimizing incorporation of societal expectations. The culture theory makes it necessary to look at the organization’s identification and (non)binding regarding the student (non-) member. The practice theory points the organization’s practice-patterns as background and possible counterpart of the student’s activities.

Regarding the students the study is framed by profession theory and action theory. The action theory allows to understand the student’s activities as intended, purposeful and planned processes. It is assumed that the student’s action is bi-oriented, on one hand to the norms and practice-patterns of the organization where he/she realizes his/her research-(development-)praxis, on the other hand to the norms and practice-patterns of the university or more specific this seminar and its docent. The profession theory indicates towards the students‘ academic background as relevant for their projects and especially for their reflections on their projects. Given that the academic program is institutionalized within an university’s institute of education and that it focuses organizations of each kind from an educational perspective, it is assumed that this explicitly educational perspective is a central part of the students‘ academic background.

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