The UMR has traditionally worked on the construction of the political link in education, i.e. the mutual relations between particular situations and overall principles. Construction processes are currently subject to several shifts linked to the crisis of the modern project. A variety of shifts has it that the same issues, plans and regulations now have a different meaning and the same arguments change meaning as they shift from one line of arguments to another, etc. Therefore, agents are faced with deeply ambiguous situations in which the material at hand (issues, plans, regulations, indicators, etc.) may refer to diverging principles. Bricolage, which holds situations together, thus proves difficult. 
The UMR aims to map these shifts, monitor them and develop the concepts necessary to think them out.
These shifts call for a reconstruction of key concepts – education, training and socialisation with far-reaching consequences both on organisation (devolution and partial decentralisation of the school structure and enactment of local governance) and content – challenge to the school form, competition from other modes of knowledge circulation (the media, the web, etc.).

The UMR project follows two lines:

The first is to turn these political and social evolutions into scientific issues – the renewal of the concepts of equality and justice.

The second concerns the study of the instruments which lead to the undebated domination of a world view: the history of political rhetoric and measurement instruments. Monitoring the development of these instruments raises the question of the circulation of knowledge between research, policy, administration and field agents.