Education: an applied multidisciplinary field? The English experience

The case of educational studies and research in England, and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, provides an interesting example of the character of fields and disciplines and the idea of practice of interdisciplinarity. Rather than a discipline, this may be described as an applied multidisciplinary field. Key disciplines have helped to shape this field through an extended university project, involving academic conferences, societies, journals and centres, as well as university education departments. There have been interdisciplinary visions and initiatives, including key organisational developments such as the Standing Conference on Studies in Education and the British Educational Research Association, and leading institutions like the Institute of Education London and the University of Leicester