A transatlantic perspective on theorizing education reveals that the academic study of educational phenomena has developed differently within various contexts (Biesta, 2011). In some non-English-speaking countries (e.g., Germany, Norway) Pädagogik (often synonymously referred to as Erziehungswissenschaft; Glaser & Keiner, 2015) is considered as a scientific discipline in its own right (Biesta, 2013). Although disciplines such as psychology or philosophy are conceived in this continental construction as adjacent disciplines and education as an independent discipline that (should) have distinctive interests, questions, and genuine theories (Biesta, 2013; Siegel & Biesta, 2021), the relative autonomy of education has always been in jeopardy (Sæverot, 2013; 2021; Matthes, 2021). Particularly today, several developments (e.g., the rise of ‘Empirische Bildungsforschung’ (empirical educational research) seem to threaten the disciplinary “heart” (Sæverot, 2013, p. 180) of Pädagogik or at least fundamentally transform its appearance in the German-speaking context (Bellmann, 2017). With this in mind, we argue that it is valuable to reconsider the principle of the relative autonomy of education, which is a central topic of the paradigm Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik (Matthes, 2020). Therefore, we take a closer look at Pädagogik’s/Erziehungswissenschaft’s past, present, and future. In the first part of this talk we retrace the historical development of this field of study in the German-speaking context and delineate when the idea of education as a relative autonomously discipline was introduced and what it originally means (e.g., Dewey, 1929; Weniger, 1990). In the second part of the talk, we analyze the current state of the discipline and spotlight developments threatening education’s autonomy. We shed light on the question of what might get lost if Pädagogik/Erziehungswissenschaft as a discipline in its own right disappeared. In the last part, we argue for education as an independent discipline that advances its own questions, interests, and perspectives and outline how educationalists can strengthen education’s autonomy and disciplinary identity (Authors, in press). Although the continental construction might offer impulses for theorizing education as a discipline in its own right more international research in this field of study and its diverse configurations is needed. A “structural interest in and activism for education’s autonomy” (Biesta & Säfström, 2011; Siegel & Biesta 2021; Yosef-Hassidim & Baldacchino, 2021, p. 51) of a strong academic community of educationists is needed to persistently work on this crucial cause.

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