It has long been recognized that formation of an academic field primarily occurs through training doctoral students within an institutionalized framework (Elmgren et al., 2016; Kuhn, 1962). Thus, doctoral education and doctoral research are testimony of both the production and reproduction of “epistemic cultures”, that is, the practices, instruments, norms, and social arrangements through which a field produces and legitimates knowledge (Knorr Cetina, 1999). This paper is part of a lager research project on how science-society interactions influence the design, content, and organization of doctoral education, and what this implies for the formation of epistemic cultures. Our focus is doctoral education in Education Science in Sweden and its development from the 1950s to the present. In this sub-study we focus on the analysis of doctoral theses published during this period. The aim of the paper is to show how internal (disciplinary) and external (societal, policy, economy) relevance pressures are visible in the theses. We ask: What kinds of knowledge production are prioritized and legitimized over time? Which intellectual traditions and ideas dominate, decline or emerge? We have analysed more than 100 doctoral theses from the post WW 2-period up to 2024. The analysis traces the movement from “pedagogik” organized as a distinct academic discipline toward problem oriented doctoral education (Nowotny et al., 2003) that characterizes Educational Sciences today. Drawing on historical institutionalism (Thelen, 1999) and the concept of epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina, 1999) the analysis focuses on how internal and external pressures gradually have gradually reshaped practices, instruments, norms, and social arrangements that define epistemic cultures of Educational Sciences. To contextualize this analysis, we refer to Foss Lindblad’s & Lindblad’s (2016) analyse of relevance regimes as ideal types in Education Science in Sweden. As in many countries, Swedish doctoral education has since the 1960s been a target of national policy making and ideals produced within international organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (Apelgren, Lindblad & Wärvik, 2022; Elmgren et al., 2016). In the doctoral theses, we can trace a movement from a discipline-centred and psychology-oriented field focused on measuring individuals and on nation building, to a policy-responsive and profession-oriented field, and increased collaborations with schools and municipalities.

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