The Georg Eckert Institute works in an advisory capacity with national and international policymakers and practitioners in education, coordinates bilateral commissions on textbooks, and draws up recommendations on how educational media can help deconstruct images whose effect is to demonise a posited “enemy” – vital work in areas hit by crisis and conflict.
As a non-university institution which actively conducts research and provides research infrastructure, the Georg Eckert Institute is evolving into an international centre of excellence and expertise in scholarly enquiry into textbooks. Its research library, which holds a unique international collection of history, social studies and geography textbooks and is currently adding religious education to its focal subjects, draws academics from around the world. The Institute’s mission of providing information and forging interconnections in research into educational media as informed by cultural studies is further served by the information and communication gateway Edumeres.net, an online platform which publishes textbook reviews, documents developments in the field and supplies access to a virtual research environment.
At the 2012 Leipzig Book Fair, the Georg Eckert Institute presented an award to the “Textbook of the Year”, an honour that will from now on be conferred annually on the best German-language textbook. The GEI also recognises excellence in educational media research with the biennial Georg Eckert Award.
