History of education -- mirrored by its scholarly journals. A historical and comparative investigation

There is no doubt, that educational sciences differ according to academic cultures they origin from and they are embedded in. History of education is the partial discipline, which is expected to mostly reflect upon these particular origins. However, the history of the history of education has rarely been analysed. The paper tries to contribute to research on educational research by looking at the development of history of education, indicated by the history 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 a field of study or an academic discipline. Of special interests are a) from an epistemological point of view: structures of topics and layers of time, methods used and methodologies discussed, layout and the relationship between text, figures and pictures; b) from a sociological point of view: disciplinary and institutional affiliation of editors and authors, social function of editorials, networking and relationships to academic organisations or associations.

As the instruments of this analysis are already proved according to their reliability and validity regarding educational research in Germany (Keiner 1999), the investigation also serves as a test, whether these instruments can be applied to a different, smaller, much more complex academic field of educational research: history of education.

The paper represents work in progress. It firstly discusses the theoretical framework, secondly, presents the methodology of investigation (including its limitation), thirdly, shows first results and discusses its comparative value.

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