Education as a lifelong process

Education in modern societies has become a lifelong process. That is why the principles of life-course research, as stated by Glen H. Elder, are of utmost significance in empirical education research: (1) focusing on long-term educational processes over the individual lifespan; (2) considering individual educational pathways within their institutional and social embeddedness (e.g., within not only formal educational institutions but also nonformal/informal contexts such as the family, peer groups, and other social networks); (3) analyzing decision-making processes in education connected with the idea of agency as well as of planning, creative, and self-determining actors; (4) investigating the time structure and timing of educational events and transitions and the consequences they have for the subsequent educational pathways and educational chances; (5) conceptionally differentiating age, cohort, and period effects. This chapter discusses the importance of these five principles for the conception, the design, and the possibilities for analysis of the German National Educational Panel Study. In the context of these principles, we formulate methodological advantages of longitudinal data on educational processes that can be attained within the National Educational Panel Study. In particular, panel data improve the opportunities to describe trajectories of growth and development over the life course and to study the patterns of causal relationships over longer time spans.