The history of the school subjects

Abstract

The history of the school subjects is a field of research set up in the 1970s, mainly in Great Britain by Ivor F. Goodson, among others, under the influence of the English “new sociology of education” and the so-called “curriculum studies”, and, in France, by Dominique Julia and André Chervel, also among others. In this case within the so-called “cultural history” and, in the field of the history of education, within the history of “school culture”. This field of research was introduced and developed in Spain in the 1990s, particularly thanks to the translation of some of the works by the authors named above. This article summarizes the ideas and contributions of these authors, as well as some developments of the history of school subjects in Spain, finally tackling a series of conceptual and methodological issues raised by the latter.