"The project is based on the assumption that (in addition to everyday forms of school development and continued efforts by academic education science to conduct empirical research on schools and lessons) there is always a need to develop, evaluate and implement school innovations in multi-professional teams directly on site – and this in particular with regard to questions of dealing with heterogeneity in the primary school sector. Consequently, the project focuses on so-called ""Laboratory Schools"" (in short: ""Lab Schools""): systematic cooperation between universities and schools, which – in the tradition of John Dewey – on the one hand consciously aim at a democratic education of their pupils and on the other hand strive for a closer connection between school practice and university research.The project ""LabSchoolsEurope: Participatory Research for Democratic Education"" pursues several closely related objectives in this sense: During the course of the project, it is planned a) to develop and evaluate democratic pedagogical innovations for dealing with heterogeneity at primary level by producing multilingual practice guides, teaching materials and best-practice examples and to make them available to a broader public, b) to document and analyse the various research approaches and organisational framework conditions of the participating Laboratory Schools in an international comparison and to further develop them in the sense of a comparative system of participatory school research, c) to train and professionalise the teachers and scientists involved methodologically and pedagogically, d) to sustainably improve the school and teaching practice of the participating institutions from a democratic and pedagogical point of view, e) to strengthen and consolidate the cooperation between school and university already practised at the various locations, and f) to establish a European-wide lab-school network which promotes exchange among the participating institutions as well as with non-European partners and at the same time forms a starting point for the support of future lab-school foundations.For this reason, universities and schools at a total of five locations (Bielefeld, Cambridge, Paris, Vienna, Brno) and in just as many countries are involved in the project. The following universities are participating in the project: the Bielefeld University (Germany), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (France), the University College of Teacher Education Vienna (Austria) and the Masarykova University (Czech Republic). The school partners are: the Laborschule Bielefeld (Germany), the University of Cambridge Primary School (United Kingdom), the Lab School Paris (France), the Praxisvolksschule Wien (Austria) and the laboratorní škola ""Labyrinth"" (Czech Republic)."