Reflections upon Some Fundamental Issues in Educational Historiography

Abstract

This paper categorizes educational historiography as part of “historiography” because educational historiography is leaning towards historiography in spite of being a fundamental educational discipline with the dual disciplinary attributes of education and historiography. It is argued that the nature of a discipline is partly defined by its researchers and its roles, but more importantly, by its origin, major research topics and objectives, basic research theories, methodologies and paradigms, as well as its relations with cognate disciplines. And each of the above factors is elaborated on to illuminate the dual disciplinary nature of educational historiography. From the perspective of educational science, what reflects the nature of education the best is people’s “educational activities,” which can be defined as the aggregate of specific activities directed to promoting valuable human development, and the various ways educators and learners participate and interact in the educational process. This paper maintains that the history of educational activities constitutes an upside-down triangle relation with the histories of educational thoughts and system. The history of educational activities is the origin, premise and foundation, whereas the latter two are the derivatives and results. Therefore, the history of educational activities must be studied as part of the research on the history of education.