Pædagogik og/eller uddannelsesforskning og uddannelsesvidenskab?: Danske konstellationer og spændinger

The first part and main part of this article describes the conflictual entry of two different interdisciplinary concepts of ‘educational research’ in Denmark during two periods including the specific tensions between these two concepts and the local established forms of pedagogical reserach: the entry during the 1970s of a new critical and sociological concept of educational research inspired by German neomarxism and ‘kritische Erziehungswissenschaft’, and the entry of the Anglo-American concept of ‘educational research’ around 2000 in the wake of the OECD’s National Review on Educational R & D in Denmark 2004. Unlike traditional pedagogical thinking and research these concepts are primarily geared towards a social scientific (sociological, economic, and political) understanding of education. The second part of the article is focused on the local reorganization of the field of educational research that occurred with the opening of the new Danish University of Education (Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet) in 2000. It shows how and why the concept of educational sciences unlike Norway and Sweden did not occur in Denmark until 2010 and with a very limited diffusion in comparison to the concept of educational research. In the third and final part, the article discusses the problems in translating ‘education’ with ‘uddannelse’ in the Nordic languages and follows the semantic transformations of the Danish concept of ‘uddannelse’ during the last 50 years. It shows how it has become the cover term for all kinds of educational but also political, economic and managerial matters making it rather difficult to say what educational research and educational sciences are sciences of and all about.