The ISD is a joint institution of the former Institutes of Education of the Primary and Secondary Levels as well as of Didactics of Social Sciences which originated from former departments of the Justus-Liebig-University.

Within the ISD, the two key topics are today represented by the departments of School Education and of Didactics of Social Sciences. The interdisciplinary nature of the institute is expressed by a number of topical fields in the context of research and teaching. This mainly includes particular questions of media education, of cross-curricular learning at school, as well as of the didactics of factual teaching at primary school. The ISD understands itself as a supporting interdisciplinary co-operation in the field of teachers'- training; among others, we have organized several interdisciplinary series of lectures on fundamental questions of learning and teaching at school. Also, doctorands from both of the ISD´s key topics co-operate in a joint team of the Gießen Graduate College of Cultural Sciences (GGC).

The key aspects of teaching are

-    for school education:  educational studies for all teacher training courses, the BA course “Bildung und Förderung in der Kindheit (Education and Support During Childhood)”, as well as contributing to educational BA and MA courses

-    for the didactics of social sciences: didactic studies of the subjects of politics and economy for all teaching courses as well as for the referential subject of political education of the BA and MA courses on non-school education.

The key aspects of research are presented on the homepages of the professors of our institute.