Education û An Anatomy of the Discipline: Rescuing the university project?

This book is about the 'discipline' of Education as it is understood and practised in contemporary universities.Some readers might find the use of the term 'discipline' provocative; it is intended to be.Disciplines are not merely intellectually coherent fields of study; they also have a political life - they are argued for, supported, challenged and debated.Nowhere is this more true than in the discipline of Education. The universities in England and Wales began their first tentative involvement with the study of Education at the end of the 19th century; however, it was not until 100 years later that most teacher education institutions colleges, polytechnics - became firmly established as part of university system. The hope of many teacher educators in the 20thCentury was that by joining the university system, they would gain the autonomy to define Education as a discipline for themselves. But Education's 'arrival' in the university sector coincided with major changes in universities themselves. Today universities are very diverse institutions: they no longer seem to have any 'essential' purpose and have largely accepted their loss of autonomy especially in Education where government intervention is particularly strong. If Education is now fully integrated into universities, then, like the system as a whole, it urgently needs to find a voice; it needs to set out a vision for itself; it needs tostate what its purpose should be within a university in the modern world. And that is the purpose of this book. John Furlong describes the current state of the discipline of Education in British universities and explores the range of national and global changes that have helped to shape the discipline in recent years. In the final section of the book, John Furlong sets out a vision for the future of Education as a university based discipline.