Educational research amid knowledge, policies and practice: specificity and challenges of an area of knowledge

Is it possible to define and construct a specific discipline called education or science of education? The author presents three possible replies. First, departments of education are no more than mere administrative groupings of subjects interested in education. Second, this very grouping generates a specificity of research amid knowledge, policy and practice. The third reply consists of betting on a specific discipline. In this last perspective, seven types of current discourse on education are analysed: spontaneous, practical, antipedagogic, pedagogic, human science, militant and of international institutions. In this field already saturated with discourses what space is there for a specific scientific discourse? In order to respond to this question, the author presents some theoretical and practical proposals.

education; science of education; educational research