The Education and Development Research Unit (Unidade de Investigação Educação e Desenvolvimento - UIED) of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL) has the general objective of promoting educational research through approaches that wich is on the one hand allow to deepen the understanding of the interdependencies between education and development in contemporary times, benefiting the educational success of students and that and on the other hand, contribute to the improvement of educational practices, processes, organizations, systems and policies. UIED progresses by analyzing and highlighting the conditions and strategies that make it possible to understand and support the educational success of students, as well as the relationships between education (inside and outside schools) and development considered as a multidimensional phenomenon (social, cultural, economic, human).

Methodologically qualitative and quantitative empirical approaches are used with educational research understood as being comprehensive, interpretive and critical. In this context, researchers accept the epistemological principles that realities are dependent on a specific time and space, as well as that the knowledge of the object of study is constructed simultaneously with the knowledge of the researcher himself.

The UIED team currently includes 19 integrated researchers and 12 doctoral students, who are members of different academic backgrounds (for example: physics, mathematics, sociology, psychology, educational sciences, etc.); and, there is also a specialization in education at the doctoral level. Since UIED is the only research center in Education at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the team includes researchers from the Faculty of Science and Technology (FCT) of UNL and also from other universities and polytechnic institutes, as well as from basic and secondary schools. secondary. This characteristic benefits the relevance of the research developed by UIED for different educational contexts and for society as a whole.