History of education is the intellectual field, which is expected not only to reflect on and investigate educational structures and processes in the past and present, but also to self-reflect on and investigate its own history and development as an intellectual field originating from and embedded in different academic cultures. The paper takes up the latter perspective by comparatively analysing the history of the history of education as a modern intellectual and academic field on the basis of its scholarly journals. It also tries to ask in a comparative perspective, how different cultural and academic backgrounds produce different shapes of histories of education as an intellectual field of study.

Some preliminary results based on samples of annual issues of history of education journals have been already presented at past ECERs. This year the analyses will be completed; therefore, the paper will present the final results of more than 50 years of history of education as an intellectual field of study as it is formed by its scholarly journals. Of special interests are a) from an epistemological point of view: structures of topics and layers of space and time, methods used and methodologies discussed; b) from the perspective of construction of a disciplinary identity: ‘heroes’ celebrated and key figures referred to; c) from a sociological point of view: disciplinary and institutional affiliation of editors and authors, networking and relationships to academic organisations or associations. 

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