At the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2026 in Tampere, Danique Deimel from the University of Duisburg-Essen presented joint research from the Civic Education Research Lab (CERL), conducted together with Elisabeth Graf and Pascal Alscher from TU Dortmund University.

The paper, “Learning Opportunities and Inequality over Time: Civic Knowledge, SES Gradients, and Classroom Discussion in ICCS 2009, 2016 and 2022”, examines how inequalities in civic knowledge have developed across different phases of educational change. Using data from three cycles of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), the study investigates socioeconomic differences in civic knowledge and the role of an open classroom climate, in which students are encouraged to discuss political and social issues and express their views.

The findings show that socioeconomic status and open classroom discussion are consistently associated with civic knowledge across countries and survey cycles. At the same time, changes in national achievement levels do not translate straightforwardly into changes in socioeconomic inequalities. In particular, the widespread decline in civic knowledge between 2016 and 2022 was not systematically accompanied by increasing social disparities.

The presented research emerged from the Civic Education Research Lab (CERL), a PostdocLab working group bringing together researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen and TU Dortmund University. CERL was established to combine expertise in civic education, political socialisation, large-scale assessment and innovative approaches to secondary data analysis across the University Alliance Ruhr.

Within CERL, Danique Deimel, Elisabeth Graf and Pascal Alscher have jointly investigated how school-based learning opportunities, individual preconditions and social contexts contribute to civic learning and political socialisation. The ECER presentation represents one of the collaborative research outputs developed within the project and brings the results of this UA Ruhr cooperation to an international audience in educational research. CERL was funded as part of the PostdocLab programme of the College for Social Sciences and Humanites (UA Ruhr) from mid-October 2024 to mid-April 2026.