The Research - Development - Innovation activity is main concern of the institute’s staff and of its coworkers. This consists of a series of research projects, ongoing or completed, following the research directions already mentioned.

IREA has been developing projects of research-development-inovation to gether with partners from most of the European countries, being involved in more than 25 international projects on different subjects, covering issues such us: the development of the concept of different services provided to adults (career counseling, networking in adult education, validation of prior learning experiences, education services for elderly); carrying out diagnosis and synthesis research studies concerning the development in different areas of adult education (education for democratic citizenship, education for gender equality, intercultural education, etc.). Projects of curriculum development were also run, in order to provide profesional training to adult educators.