ABSTRACT
The chapter traces the origins and development of education studies as an undergraduate university subject in the UK. The Robbins Report (1963) recommended that teaching become an all-graduate profession and primary-school teachers were required to undertake Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree courses as their training. The degrees were to be taught in the training colleges, but validated and awarded by the local universities, and the disciplines of psychology, sociology, philosophy and history were chosen as the academic framework for the degree. However, theory of pedagogy was often lacking and student teachers complained that the BEd degree was over-theorised and irrelevant to their future careers in schools. In the 1990s, the government took control of teacher education establishing the Teacher Training Agency and the Teaching Standards became the criteria for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), reducing the study of educational theory. The chapter shows how the universities escaped the government control of the study of education during the late 1990s and 2000s by offering new undergraduate degree courses in education studies that preserved educational theory. It includes description of a small-scale research project which examined the development of the first education studies courses in nine universities in 2003–2005.
