Historians and educationists: the history of education as a field of study in post-war England Part II: 1972–96

This is the first of two essays which, taken together, examine the development since 1945 of the history of education as a field of study in England. The production of published research and teaching is examined in several contexts. Institutional change within higher education, intellectual fashion, overseas influences and the political economy of state-funded research have all helped shape what has been written. So too have distinctive traditions within academic departments of history, education and sociology at home and abroad. For published work on the history of education this process amounted to slow growth and diversification within the history departments of the 1950s and early 1960s accompanied by a larger but separate tradition within the education departments of the same period. Thereafter, rapid expansion in the field was based on significant change within the universities, in education more generally and in society more broadly still. By the late 1960s the example of parallel developments in A...