FORTH

Background:

The Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), established in 1983. It is the largest research center in Greece with well-organized facilities, highly qualified personnel and a reputation as a top-level research institution worldwide.

The research and technological directions of FORTH focus on areas of major scientific, social, and economic interest. The Foundation, with headquarters in Heraklion, includes six Research Institutes in different parts of the country. FORTH currently employs 1080 people (researchers, technicians and administrative staff) and trains around 320 students from Greece and other European countries.

Vision and Strategy:

Priority at FORTH is to cultivate an environment that fosters Learning, Research and Innovation. Our strategy towards achieving this goal is the pursuit of scientific quality and excellence. This is central towards meeting 3 targets, which serve as pillars for Regional, National and European socio – economic growth:

• Scientific and technological research in targeted strategic areas, characterized by high scientific and economic added value.
• Training and preparation of the next generation of researchers in close collaboration with the Universities of Greece.
• Exploitation of the research output through the development of innovative products and services, which benefit society and support further economic growth.

FORTH’s aim is to foster a prosperous environment in order for researchers to perform high-level scientific research in Greece.

The Educational Research and Evaluation (ERE) Group operates within the Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics (IACM), which is one of the founding institutes of FORTH. The Group’s research concerns are in areas of educational and social innovation with particular focus on the aspects of gender, S&T, ICT, adult education and leadership in education.

The scope of activity is on research for modelling and the building of understanding of the emerging social, pedagogical / training and policy trends in Europe. The underlying concern is the identification of methods which can foster effectiveness in social cohesion and learning for responsible decision-making and improvement of education and lifelong learning services. This is achieved through the design and implementation of awareness development activities with the actors of the educational community, the carrying out of applied research, digital forms of course design and implementation, the conduct of programme evaluations.

The Group’s research and evaluation activity is addressed under the scope of policy comprehensiveness and coherence within and across the sector of education and related sectors from a learning tradition perspective.

Over the years, the Group has developed conceptual tools to facilitate policy and tangible outputs to direct self-reflection for practitioners on matters pertinent to education and training.