‘Rigour’, ‘discipline’ and ‘systematic’ serve as identifiers of ‘normal science’ in the context of historical and cultural contingencies. They are semantically loaded with timely and cultural meanings and provide forms and demarcations of a scientific field according to cultural specifities. Therefore, ‘rigour’, ‘discipline’ and the ‘systematic’ are core concepts for constructing identities and integrating centrifugal forces of diversification and fragmentation. They serve also as instruments of exerting power of scholarly self-governance. The paper, firstly, shows that ‘rigour’, ‘discipline’ and ‘systematic’ are rather vague and ambivalent concepts, especially when their meaning in different languages and cultures is considered. Therefore, terminology has to be discussed as the first problem. The paper, secondly, uses three different theoretical frameworks to analyse the functions and meanings of these core concepts for constructing educational research identities: a) a systems theory approach to identify education research as an element of the modern science system (Luhmann, Stichweh) b) a history of social science approach to analyse historical developments and to identify cultural contingencies of forms and modes of doing research as a ‘normal science’ (Wagner, Wagner & Wittrock, Nowotny et al.), and, c) a globalisation approach, which uses different scapes and shapes (Appadurai; Beck et al.) to identify processes of diversification and integration, and of transcending and domesticating educational research knowledge. The paper, thirdly, sketches the advantages and disadvantages of rigidly maintaining tightly coupled concepts of ‘rigour’, ‘discipline’ and ‘systematic’ using the examples of : a) conceptualization of knowledge building (e.g. cyclic, linear, discrete), b) interculturality and multilinguality, the degree of self-governance of scientific fields between autonomy and heteronomy (Bourdieu), c) unified-insular and fractured-porous disciplines (Ambrose, Meusburger), and d) (ex ante and ex post) criteria for scientific ‘quality’, assessment and evaluation, e.g. for publication. It, finally, opts for loosely coupled concepts of ‘rigour’, ‘discipline’ and ‘systematic’, however, only if explicitness, critical awareness, reasoning and reflexivity serve as meta-criteria, which are able to balance innovative and conservative elements of educational research, and which justify a few, but strict basic criteria to exclude e.g. superficiality, arbitrariness and randomness. It, therefore, argues for strengthening a transversal, (meta-)reflexive, communicative dimension (probably just like the traditional disputatio or the concept of a ‘reflexive modernity’ (Beck et al.), which both opens and limits the forms and formats of educational research, and which takes diversity and intercultural communication as a valuable and powerful resource of sound scholarly production, mutual understanding and intellectual delight.

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