The History of Education as a Discipline and a Field of Research: Old and New Issues

It is difficult to find a disciplinary field as history of education, whose members, from the most different countries, constantly question its meaning, aim and contents, having to justify, at any moment and in any place, its existence. Besides, since the 1980s, these arguments are associated with complaints about its decline. In this text, two ways of facing this decline from digital history and critical approaches to empiric historicism are first analysed. Some tensions present, since its origins, in this disciplinary field are then tackled, as well as two attempts, one failed and another with a certain success, to overcome them.