ABSTRACT
An alternative to the constituent disciplines approach is to treat education itself-teaching, learning, running schools and educational systems-as the subject of research. This alternative is not characterized by a
neglect of disciplines, upon which it draws eclectically, but rather by the fact that what is drawn from the disciplines and applied to education is not results or even the theories which give shape to each discipline, but methods of enquiry and analysis together with such concepts as have utility for a theory of education. The problems selected for enquiry are selected because of their importance as educational problems, that is, for their significance in the context of professional practice. Research and development guided by such problems will contribute primarily to the understanding of educational action through the construction of a theory of education or a tradition of understanding. Only secondarily will research in this mode contribute to philosophy, psychology or sociology. And this principle of applied research is, I think, appropriate mutatis mutandis in all the professional schools of our universities.
