¹ Power, Edward J. “Persistent Myths in the History of Education.” History of Education Quarterly 2, no. 3 (September 1962): 140–151; Nash, Paul. “History of Education.“ Review of Educational Research 34, no. 1 (February 1964): 5–21; Greene, Maxine. “The Professional Significance of History of Education.” History of Education Quarterly 7, no. 2 (Summer 1967): 182–190; Hood, Bruce L. “The Historian of Education: Some Notes on His Role.” History of Education Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Autumn 1969): 372–75; Sloan, Douglas. “Historiography and the History of Education.” Review of Research in Education 1 (1973): 239–269; Clifford, Geraldine Joncich. “Education: Its History and Historiography.” Review of Research in Education 4 (1976): 210–267; Gersman, Elinor Mondale. “Textbooks in American Educational History.” History of Education Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Spring 1973): 41–51.Google Scholar

² Bailyn, Bernard, Education in the Forming of American Society; Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill, Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, VA., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1960); Bestor, Arthur E., Educational Wastelands; the Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953). Brickman, William W. “Revisionism and the Study of the History of Education.” History of Education Quarterly 4, no. 4 (December 1964): 209–223; Veysey, Laurence R. “Toward a New Direction in Educational History: Prospect and Retrospect.” History of Education Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Autumn 1969): 343–359; Burgess, Charles. “History of Education.” Review of Educational Research 37, no. 1 (February 1967): 21–33; Mehl, Bernard. “History of Education.” Review of Educational Research 31, no. 1 (February 1961): 7–19; and Finkelstein, Barbara. “Education Historians as Mythmakers.” Review of Research in Education 18 (1992): 255–297. On parallel developments in Canada, see Harrigan, Patrick J. “A Comparative Perspective on Recent Trends in the History of Education in Canada.” History of Education Quarterly 26, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 71–86; and Axelrod, Paul. “Historical Writing and Canadian Education from the 1970s to the 1990s.” History of Education Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 19–38. On the somewhat different tradition in Great Britain, see Cunningham, Peter. “Educational History and Educational Change: The Past Decade of English Historiography.” History of Education Quarterly 29, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 77–94.Google Scholar

³ In choosing the term “disciplinary history,” I am not taking a position on whether or not education, or any of the other larger fields associated with such historical specialties, can or should be considered a discipline in the conventional academic meaning of the word. The weight of opinion appears to hold that education is a broad field of inquiry rather than a discipline, which may also be true of science as a collection of discrete scholarly domains. Instead, the term “disciplinary history” is intended to convey the notion that historians working within these subfields must attend to the concerns of their nonhistorian colleagues, and address issues deemed important to a related nonhistorical realm of research and inquiry. For an influential discussion of the question of the disciplinary status of research in education, see Shulman, Lee S. “Disciplines of Education: An Overview.” Educational Researcher 10, no. 6 (June 1981): 5–15, 13.Google Scholar

⁴ For a revealing exchange by historians working in professional schools, including an educational historian (Zimmerman, Jonathan), addressing many of these questions, see “Interchange: History in the Professional Schools.” The Journal of American History 92, no. 2 (September 2005): 553–575. An important distinction, of course, is the fields discussed in this essay, which include two that are often taught in arts and science faculties: history of science and economic history. Even these fields, however, are addressed in professional colleges (engineering and business) on some campuses.Google Scholar

⁵ Conant, James B. “George Sarton and Harvard University.” Isis 48, no. 3 (September 1957): 301–5; Thackray, Arnold and Merton, Robert K. “On Discipline Building: The Paradoxes of George Sarton.” Isis 63, no. 4 (December 1972): 472–495; Bernard, Cohen I. “The Isis Crises and the Coming of Age of the History of Science Society.” Isis 90 (1999): S28–S42.Google Scholar

⁶ Hilts, Victor L. “History of Science at the University of Wisconsin.” Isis 75, no. 1 (March 1984): 63–94; Kuhn, Thomas S. “Professionalization Recollected in Tranquility.” Isis 75, no. 1 (March 1984): 29–32.Google Scholar

⁷ Sokal, Michael M. “The History of Science Society, 1970–1999: From Subscription Agency to Professional Society.” Isis 90 (1999): S135–S181; French, Richard and Gross, Michael. “A Survey of North American Graduate Students in the History of Science 1970–71.“ Science Studies 3, (2) (April 1973): 161–171.Google Scholar

⁸ Olesko, Kathryn M. “Employment Trends in History of Science.” Isis 72, no. 3 (September 1981): 477–79; Dekosky, Robert K. “The History of Science in a History Department.” The History Teacher 13, no. 3 (May 1980): 371–78.Google Scholar

⁹ Rosenberg, Charles. “Science in American Society: A Generation of Historical Debate.“ Isis 74, no. 3 (September 1983): 356–367; Dekosky, Robert K. “The History of Science in a History Department.” The History Teacher 13, no. 3 (May 1980): 371–78; Shapere, Dudley. “External and Internal Factors in the Development of Science.” Science and Technology Studies 4, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 1–9.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Rosenberg, , “Science in American Society,” 357–59; Shapere, Dudley. “External and Internal Factors in the Development of Science.” Science and Technology Studies 4, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 1–9 For a somewhat chiding perspective on these debates, see Graham, Loren. “Why Can't History Dance Contemporary Ballet? Or Whig History and the Evils of Contemporary Dance.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 6, no. 34 (Winter 1981): 3–6.Google Scholar

¹¹ These findings were obtained by examining a sample of two hundred from the online membership directory of the History of Science Society, selected randomly by the starting letters of surnames.Google Scholar

¹² Rosenberg, , “Science in American Society,” 356–367; Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory. “Women in the History of Science: An Ambiguous Place.” Osiris 2nd Series, Vol. 10 (1995): 39–58; Keller, Evelyn Fox. “Gender and Science: Origin, History, and Politics.” Osiris 2nd Series, Vol. 10 (1995): 26–38; Oreskes, Naomi. “Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science.” Osiris 2nd Series, Vol. 11 (1996): 87–113; Cohen, Estelle. “What the Women at All Times Would Laugh At”: Redefining Equality and Difference, Circa 1660–1760.” Osiris 2nd Series, Vol. 12 (1997): 121–142; Weiss, Sheila Faith. “The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany.” Osiris 2nd Series, Vol. 3 (1987): 193–236; Remington, John A. “Beyond Big Science in America: The Binding of Inquiry.” Social Studies of Science 18, no. 1 (February 1988): 45–72.Google Scholar

¹³ Reingold, Nathan. “Through Paradigm-Land to a Normal History of Science.“ Social Studies of Science 10, no. 4 (November 1980): 475–496; Forman, Paul. “Independence, Not Transcendence, for the Historian of Science.” Isis 82, no. 1 (March 1991): 71–86; Shapin, Steven. “A Course in the Social History of Science.” Social Studies of Science 10, no. 2 (May 1980): 231–258; Munevar, Gonzalo, “New Directions, Really?” PSA: Proceeding of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992, Vol. 2: Symposia and Invited Papers (1992), 341–350; Dear, Peter. “Cultural History of Science: An Overview with Reflections.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 20, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 150–170.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Jasanoff, Sheila. “Reconstructing the past, Constructing the Present: Can Science Studies and the History of Science Live Happily Ever after?“ Social Studies of Science 30, no. 4 (August 2000): 621–631; Nickles, Thomas. “Philosophy of Science and History of Science.” Osiris. 2nd Series, Vol. 10 (1995): 138–163; Barber, Bernard. “The Emergence and Maturation of the Sociology of Science.” Science and Technology Studies 5, no. 3/4 (Autumn 1987): 129–133.Google Scholar

¹⁵ These figures are taken from the Web sites for these organizations. On relations between the fields, see Brieger, Gert H. “Guest Editorial: The History of Medicine and the History of Science.” Isis 72, no. 4 (December 1981): 536–540; Warner, John Harley, The History of Science and the Sciences of Medicine, Osiris. 2nd Series, Vol. 10, Constructing Knowledge in the History of Science (1995), 164–193.Google Scholar

¹⁶ A survey of the departmental affiliations of authors in Isis for a five-year period between 1991 and 1995 revealed that fifty-one of eighty-two were associated with programs in history or philosophy of science, while only twenty-one were from history departments. The parallel numbers for Osiris were thirty-eight of fifty-eight in history or philosophy of science, and thirteen from history.Google Scholar

¹⁷ These figures are taken from the History of Science Society Web site. Rosenberg, “Science in American Society,” 356–367; Brush, Stephen G. “Scientists as Historians.” Osiris 2nd Series, Vol. 10 (1995): 214–231.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Heaton, Herbert. “The Early History of the Economic History Association.“ The Journal of Economic History 1 (December 1941): 107–9; Idem, “Twenty-Five Years of the Economic History Association: A Reflective Evaluation.” The Journal of Economic History 2 5, no. 4 (December 1965): 465–479; Goodrich, Carter. “Economic History: One Field or Two?” The Journal of Economic History, 20, no. 4 (December 1960): 531–38; Cochran, Thomas C. “Economic History, Old and New,” The American Historical Review, 74, no. 5. (June 1969): 1561–1572Google Scholar

¹⁹ Fogel, Robert William. “The Reunification of Economic History with Economic Theory.“ The American Economic Review 55, no. 1/2 (March 1965,): 92–98; Idem, “The New Economic History: Its Findings and Methods.” The Economic History Review New Series, 19, no. 3 (1966): 642–656; Meyer, John R. and Conrad, Alfred H. “Economic Theory, Statistical Inference, and Economic History.” The Journal of Economic History 17, no. 4 (December 1957): 524–544; North, Douglass C. “The State of Economic History.” The American Economic Review 55, no. 1/2 (March 1965): 86–91.Google Scholar

²⁰ Fogel, Robert William. “Historiography and Retrospective Econometrics.“ History and Theory 9, no. 3 (1970): 245–264; Engerman, Stanley L. “Recent Developments in American Economic History.” Social Science History 2, no. 1 (Autumn 1977): 72–89; McCloskey, Donald N. “The Achievements of the Cliometric School.” The Journal of Economic History 38, no. 1 (March 1978): 13–28; Blaug, Mark. “No History of Ideas, Please, We're Economists.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 15, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 145–164; Temin, Peter. “The Future of the New Economic History:” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12 (Autumn 1981): 179–197.Google Scholar

²¹ Heckman, James J. “The Value of Quantitative Evidence on the Effect of the Past on the Present.” The American Economic Review 87, no. 2 (May 1997): 404–8; Greif, Avner. “Cliometrics After 40 Years.“ The American Economic Review 87, no. 2 (May 1997): 400–3.Google Scholar

²² Since the departmental affiliations of paper authors and discussants were provided in the published program, calculating participation at the 2003 meeting was a simple matter of counting: sixty-five were from economics departments, and only five from history. JEH authors were counted between 1991 and 1995, and 165 of 206 were appointed in economics departments, as opposed to just thirty-one from history. Also see Whaples, Robert. “A Quantitative History of the Journal of Economic History and the Cliometric Revolution.“ The Journal of Economic History 51, no. 2 (June 1991): 289–301; Idem., “The Supply and Demand of Economic History: Recent Trends in The Journal of Economic History,” Published Online: 3 September 2002.Google Scholar

²³ Cameron, Rondo. “Economic History, Pure and Applied.“ The Journal of Economic History 36, no. 1 (March 1976): 3–27; Solow, Robert M., “Economic History and Economics,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 75, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Ninety-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (May 1985), 328–331; Heckman, , “The Value of Quantitative Evidence on the Effect of the Past on the Present,” 406–8; North, Douglass C., “Cliometrics—40 Years Later,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 87, No. 2, Papers and Proceeding of the Hundred and Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (May 1997), 412–14.Google Scholar

²⁴ Goldin, Claudia. “Cliometrics and the Nobel.“ The Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 206–7; Gallman, Robert E. “The Role of Economic History in the Education of the Economist.” The American Economic Review 55, no. 1/2 (March 1965): 109–111; Cameron, Rondo. “Has Economic History a Role in an Economist's Education?” The American Economic Review 55, no. 1/2 (March 1965): 112–15.Google Scholar

²⁵ Parker, William N. “A “New” Business History? A Commentary on the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics.” The Business History Review 67, no .4 (Winter 1993): 623–636; Whaples, “The Supply and Demand of Economic History: Recent Trends in The Journal of Economic History,” passim.Google Scholar

²⁶ Woodard, Calvin. “History, Legal History and Legal Education.“ Virginia Law Review 53, no. 1 (January 1967): 89–121; Grant, J.A.C. “What Areas of Exploration in Legal History Are Appropriate?” The American Journal of Legal History 3, no. 4 (October 1959): 370–78; Hurst, James Willard. “Old and New Dimensions of Research in United States Legal History.” The American Journal of Legal History 23, no. 1 (January 1979): 1–20; Horwitz, Morton J. “The Conservative Tradition in the Writing of American Legal History.” The American Journal of Legal History 17, no. 3 (July 1973): 275–294 Welke, Barbara Y. “Willard Hurst and the Archipelago of American Legal Historiography.” Law and History Review 18, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 197–204.Google Scholar

²⁷ Hurst, Willard. “The Law in United States History.“ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104, no. 5 (October 17, 1960): 518–526; Novak, William J. “Law, Capitalism, and the Liberal State: The Historical Sociology of James Willard Hurst.” Law and History Review 18, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 97–145; Welke, “Willard Hurst and the Archipelago of American Legal Historiography,” 197–203; Flaherty, David H. “An Approach to American History: Willard Hurst as Legal Historian.” The American Journal of Legal History 14, no. 3 (July 1970): 222–234; Parker, Graham. “The Masochism of the Legal Historian.” The University of Toronto Law Journal 24, no. 3 (Summer 1974): 279–317.Google Scholar

²⁸ Hurst, James Willard. “The State of Legal History.“ Reviews in American History 10, no. 4 (December 1982): 292–305; Scheiber, Harry N. “American Constitutional History and the New Legal History: Complementary Themes in Two Modes.” The Journal of American History 68, no. 2 (September 1981): 337–350; Hartog, Hendrik. “Snakes in Ireland: A Conversation with Willard Hurst.” Law and History Review 12, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 370–390; Keller, Morton. “Business History and Legal History.” The Business History Review 53, no. 3 (Autumn 1979): 295–303; Scheiber, Harry N. “Introduction: The Bicentennial and the Rediscovery of Constitutional History.” The Journal of American History 74, no. 3 (December 1987): 665–674.Google Scholar

²⁹ Welke, Barbara Y. “When All the Women Were White, and All the Blacks Were Men: Gender, Class, Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855–1914.” Law and History Review 13, no. 2 (Autumn 1995): 261–316; Basch, Norma. “The Emerging Legal History of Women in the United States: Property, Divorce, and the Constitution.“ Signs 12, no. 1 (Autumn 1986): 97–117; Grossberg, Michael. “Crossing Boundaries: Nineteenth-Century Domestic Relations Law and the Merger of Family and Legal History.” American Bar Foundation Research Journal 10, no. 4 (Autumn 1985): 799–847; Wunder, John R. “Doesn't Anyone Speak Injun in this Courtroom?”: New Perspectives in Native American Legal History.” Reviews in American History 5, no. 4 (December 1977): 467–476; Hoxie, Frederick E. “Towards a ‘New’ North American Indian Legal History.” The American Journal of Legal History 30, no. 4 (October 1986): 351–57; Cole, Richard P. and Chin, Gabriel J. “Emerging from the Margins of Historical Consciousness: Chinese Immigrants and the History of American Law.” Law and History Review 17, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 325–64; Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. “Turning Points and the Relevance of Colonial Legal History.” The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., Vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1993): 7–17; Moglen, Eben. “Toward a New Deal Legal History.” Virginia Law Review 80, no. 1 (February 1994): 263–75.Google Scholar

³⁰ Friedman, Lawrence M. “The State of American Legal History.” The History Teacher 17, no. 1 (November 1983): 103–119; Kalman, Laura. “Comment on Schlegel.“ Law and Society Review 22, no. 5 (1988): 987–990; Mack, Kenneth W. “Law, Society, Identity, and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875–1905.” Law and Social Inquiry 24, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 377–409.Google Scholar

³¹ Membership figures are taken from the numbers reported on the Web page of the ACLS, which lists the ASLH as an affiliated society (along with EHA and HSS). The program for the 2002 meeting of ASLH listed the departmental or school affiliation of participants, making it relatively easy to make such calculations. Thirty-six of the sixty-two articles published in the American Journal of Legal History between 1991 and 1995 were written by faculty members in law schools, while sixteen were by members of history departments. In the same span of time, twenty-six of thirty-six articles in the Legal History Review were authored by law professors, with just nine by history department faculty. Between the two journals, the law faculty outnumbered their history department colleagues by more than a two-to-one ratio.Google Scholar

³² On the early history of the society, see Hiner, N. Ray. “History of Education for the 1990s and beyond: The Case for Academic Imperialism.“ History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 137–160. Also see Power, “Persistent Myths in the History of Education, 140–151; and Nash, “History of Education,” 5–21. Cremin's books during this time were Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Knopf, 1961) and The Wonderful World of Ellwood Paterson Cubberley: An Essay on the Historiography of American Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1965).Google Scholar

³³ Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Rosenberg, Charles E., The Cholera Years, The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). As a path-breaking work of the “new economic history,” the following article is often cited: Conrad, Alfred and Meyer, John. “The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South.” Journal of Political Economy 66(1958): 95–130. Also see Fogel, “The Reunification of Economic History with Economic Theory,” passim. Hurst, James Willard, Law and Economic Growth; The Legal History of the Lumber Industry in Wisconsin, 1836–1915 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

³⁴ Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform; Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); Spring, Joel H., Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972); Karier, Clarence J., Paul Violas, C., and Joel Spring, Roots of Crisis: American Education in The Twentieth Century (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973).Google Scholar

³⁵ Ravitch, Diane, The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools (New York: Basic Books, 1978); also see Michaelsen, Jacob B. “Revision, Bureaucracy, and School Reform: A Critique of Katz.” The School Review 85, no. 2 (February 1977): 229–246. For examples of other studies featuring mildly revisionist themes, see Kaestle, Carl F., The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973) and Schultz, Stanley K., The Culture Factory; Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

³⁶ Veysey, “Toward a New Direction in Educational History,” 343–44. For an overview of developments in the sociology of education in these years, see Trent, William T.; Braddock, Jomills Henry II; Henderson, Ronald D. “Sociology of Education: A Focus on Education as an Institution.” Review of Research in Education 12 (1985): 295–336. The summation of the “radical” perspective was the controversial work by Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Schooling in Capitalist America (New York: Basic Books, 1976). For additional commentary, see Joseph Featherstone, David Hogan and Mark Stern. “Commentaries.” History of Education Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 139–158; Butts, R. Freeman. “Public Education and Political Community.” History of Education Quarterly 1, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 165–183; Herbst, Jurgen. “Beyond the Debate over Revisionism: Three Educational Pasts Writ Large.” History of Education Quarterly 20, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 131–145.Google Scholar

³⁷ For contemporary perspectives on this, see Hogeboom, Willard L. “The New Left and the Revision of American History.” The History Teacher 2, no. 1 (November 1968): 51–55; Zuckerman, Michael. “Myth and Method: The Current Crises in American Historical Writing.“ The History Teacher 17, no. 2 (February 1984): 219–245. For a sampling of scholarship representing this movement in American history, see Barton Bernstein, J., ed., Towards a New Past; Dissenting Essays in American History (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) passim.Google Scholar

³⁸ See the discussion of this in Zuckerman, “Myth and Method,” 221–235; for a somewhat different perspective, see Neuchterlein, James. “Radical Historians.“ The History Teacher 15, no. 1 (November 1981): 25–42. For a sampling of commentary on these questions, see Berthoff, Rowland. “Writing a History of Things Left Out.” Reviews in American History 14, no. 1 (March 1986): 1–16; Diggins, John Patrick. “Comrades and Citizens: New Mythologies in American Historiography.” The American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (June 1985): 614–638; Hunt, Michael H. “Ideology.” The Journal of American History 71, no. 1 (June 1990): 108–115; Kammen, Michael. “The Problem of American Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration.” American Quarterly 45, no. 1 (March 1993): 1–43; Leff, Mark H. “Revisioning U.S. Political History.” The American Historical Review 100, no. 3 (January 1995): 829–853.Google Scholar

³⁹ Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) Part IV.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Membership figures were provided by the staff of the History of Education Quarterly, and Labaree, Professor David, Vice President for Division F of AERA, 2004–06. Size may also be somewhat indicative of status differentials, as it is widely noted that education faculties continue to suffer a poor academic reputation, and this may well affect the standing of historians in education as well. One of the anonymous reviewers for the Quarterly suggested that the poor reputation of scholarship in education may also be a factor in the development of the field. This is probably true, but hard to pinpoint in terms of effect. Patricia and Loren Graham offered the observation that economic historians, historians of science, and legal historians all benefit from association with relatively high-status disciplinary fields, and this may influence their willingness to identify with them. My colleague Bruce Baker added the point that most professors in these fields are also higher paid than conventional historians as well, which also may account for preferences in terms of departmental affiliation. This is almost certainly not true of historians of education. On the reputation of the larger field, see Labaree, David, The Trouble with Ed Schools (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), passim; and Kaestle, Carl F. “The Awful Reputation of Education Research.” Educational Researcher 22, no. 1 (January 1993): 23, 26–31.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Data on individual subscribers were supplied by the staff of the Quarterly. The survey of authors included all articles, review essays, and commentary published between 1991 and 1995, a total of seventy-nine. Of these, forty-three were written by historians in schools or colleges of education, while twenty-five were by historians in history departments (eleven were from other academic backgrounds). The analysis of program participants was performed by identifying individuals in the program, and ascertaining their departmental affiliation through institutional Web pages, where possible.Google Scholar

⁴² Brush, , “Scientists as Historians,” 214–230; Parker, “The Masochism of the Legal Historian,” 280–300.Google Scholar

⁴³ Novick, , That Noble Dream, Part IV; for further discussion of these themes, see Kloppenberg, James. “Objectivity and Historicism: A Century of American Historical Writing.” The American Historical Review 94, no. 4 (October 1989): 1011–1030; Megill, Allan. “Fragmentation and the Future of Historiography.” The American Historical Review 96, no. 3 (June 1991): 693–98; Haskell, Thomas L. “Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick's That Noble Dream.” History and Theory 29, no. 2 (May 1990): 129–157; and Novick's reply, My Correct Views on Everything.” The American Historical Review 96, no. 3 (June 1991): 699–703. On historical method, also see Kaestle, Carl F. “Standards of Evidence in Historical Research: How Do We Know When We Know?” History of Education Quarterly 32, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 361–66; Scott, Joan Wallach. “History in Crisis: The Others’ Side of the Story.” The American Historical Review 94, no. 3 (June 1989): 680–692; McCullagh, C. Behan. “Can Our Understanding of Old Texts Be Objective?” History and Theory 30, no. 3 (October 1991): 302–323; Lorenz, Chris. “Can Histories Be True? Narrativism, Positivism, and the “Metaphorical Turn.” History and Theory 37, no. 3 (October 1998): 309–329.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ This literature has been surveyed in a number of review articles: Donato, Ruben and Lazerson, Marvin. “New Directions in American Educational History: Problems and Prospects.“ Educational Researcher Vol 29, no. 8 (November 2000): 4–15; Finkelstein, “Education Historians as Mythmakers,” passim; Rury, John L. and Mirel, Jeffrey E. “The Political Economy of Urban Education.” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): 49–110; Tyack, David. “Public School Reform: Policy Talk and Institutional Practice.” American Journal of Education 100, no. 1 (November 1991): 1–19; Seller, Maxine Schwartz. “Boundaries, Bridges, and the History of Education.” History of Education Quarterly 31, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 195–206; Franklin, V.P., Lynn Gordon, D., Maxine Schwartz Seller and Fass, Paula S. “Understanding American Education in the Twentieth Century.” History of Education Quarterly 31, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 47–65; Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., “Status of the Historiography of Chicano Education: A Preliminary Analysis.” History of Education Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 523–536; Butchart, Ronald E. “‘Outthinking and Outflanking the Owners of the World': A Historiography of the African American Struggle for Education.” History of Education Quarterly 28 no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 333–366.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For suggestive discussion of these issues, see Warren, Donald. “Learning from Experience: History and Teacher Education.“ Educational Researcher 14, no. 10 (December 1985): 5–12; Carter, Susan B. “Occupational Segregation, Teachers’ Wages, and American Economic Growth.” The Journal of Economic History 46, no. 2 (June 1986): 373–383; Raftery, Judith R. “Missing the Mark: Intelligence Testing in Los Angeles Public Schools, 1922–32.” History of Education Quarterly v. 28 (Spring 1988): 73–93; Slotten, Hugh R. “Science, Education, and Antebellum Reform: The Case of Bache, Alexander Dallas. “History of Education Quarterly 31, no. 3 (Autumn 1991): 323–342; Tanner, Laurel N. “Curriculum History as Usable Knowledge.” Curriculum Inquiry 12, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 405–411.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Button, H. Warren. “Creating More Useable Pasts: History in the Study of Education.“ Educational Researcher 8, no. 5 (May 1979): 3–9; Graham, Patricia Albjerg. “Historians as Policy Makers,” Educational Researcher 9, no. 11 (December 1980): 21–24; Butts, “Public Education and Political Community,” passim; Clifford, “Education: Its History and Historiography,” 215–18.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For notable recent treatments of these questions, see Coleman, James S. “Families and Schools.” Educational Researcher 16, no. 6 (August 1987): 32–38; Portes, Pedro R. “Social and Psychological Factors in the Academic Achievement of Children of Immigrants: A Cultural History Puzzle.” American Educational Research Journal 36, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 489–507; Woodward, John and Rieth, Herbert. “A Historical Review of Technology Research in Special Education.“ Review of Educational Research 67, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 503–536; Richardson, John G. and Parker, Tara L. “The Institutional Genesis of Special Education: The American Case.” American Journal of Education 101, no. 4 (August 1993): 359–392; Eisenmann, Linda. “Reclaiming Religion: New Historiographic Challenges in the Relationship of Religion and American Higher Education.” History of Education Quarterly 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1999,): 295–306; Baker, David P. “Schooling All the Masses: Reconsidering the Origins of American Schooling in the Postbellum Era.” Sociology of Education 72, no. 4 (October 1999): 197–215.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ For an overview of current training practices in the history of education, I examined the Web page information for ten institutions that list history of education or historical foundations of education as a distinct program or area of concentration for doctoral degrees. These were selected from a larger universe of several dozen leading research-based schools of education, and included Wisconsin, Stanford, Columbia (Teachers College), Illinois, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Iowa State, and Georgia. In the Web page descriptions of these programs, the terms “educational research” and “educational policy” did not appear. This does not mean, of course, that students in these programs do not take courses examining these issues. But it does reflect the predominant ethos of training in the field, which is skewed toward the social foundations and courses in history departments. This, of course, is fine, but not if it comes at the expense of training in the modes of inquiry and contemporary research issues in the larger field of education.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For evidence of this, see the essays in Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, and Lee Shulman, S., Issues in Education Research: Problems and Possibilities (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1999); also see Lagemann's treatment of the development of educational research, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000) passim.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Division membership figures were obtained from AERA. As has been noted at Division F business meetings, there are several AERA Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that come close to approximating the division in size. As an indicator of the Division's relative isolation, only one of its eighteen sessions was cosponsored during the 2005 Annual Meeting, and that was with the very small SIG on Biographical and Archival Research (as indicated in the published AERA Annual Meeting Program for 2005). Of course, a few more sessions have been cosponsored in the past, but the vast majority has not, even when they have addressed issues that may be of wide interest to educational researchers elsewhere in AERA. For the most part, Division F sessions are attended by historians, and garner relatively little interest from the rest of the educational research profession.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Publication rates for historians were calculated by examining all articles in AERA publications with a “history of education” keyword, and counting those written by historians. The book and review award winners are listed in the next note. The distinguished career award went to David Tyack.Google Scholar

⁵² Historical winners of the AERA book award include: Hogan, David John, Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Philadelphia, 1985); Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1988); Labaree, David F., The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven, 1988); Tyack, David and Hansot, Elisabeth, Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Schools (New Haven, 1990); and Mirel, Jeffrey, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907–81 (Ann Arbor, 1993). The award winning review article was Kaestle, Carl F., “The History of Literacy and the History of Readers,” Review of Research in Education Vol. 12 (1985), 11–53.Google Scholar

⁵³ See, for instance, the summary of a Spencer Foundation conference on the field, held in 2001, in Donato, and Lazerson, , “New Directions in American Educational History: Problems and Prospects,” passim.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ The foregoing should also not be interpreted in any way as a failure to appreciate the many significant contributions of historians of education who hold appointments in history departments. Although a minority in the field, they still represent a large group, and are many are fully integrated and contributing members of the field. Naturally, they too must pay heed to the larger world of educational research to one extent or another, although not to the degree of their colleagues in schools and colleges of education. As teachers and scholars, most probably consider themselves to be primarily American or European historians who happen to study education as an area of interest. This is slightly different from what has been proposed herein: that educational historians think of themselves as educational researchers who happen to study history. Of course, the combination of these two perspectives on professional identity undoubtedly helps to make the history of education such a dynamic and interesting field of study.Google Scholar