Education, as an academic field taught at universities around the world, emerged from a range of disciplines including philosophy, history, sociology, politics/policy, economics and law. Educational Foundations is the first reference work to provide an authoritative state-of-the-field mapping of these foundational disciplines, showing the ideas, methods, theories and approaches that each of them contributes to field of education. Each of the six volumes is devoted to the examination of a constituent discipline, namely:

Philosophical Foundations of Education (Volume 1)
Historical Foundations of Education (Volume 2)
Sociological Foundations of Education (Volume 3)
Policy Foundations of Education (Volume 4)
Economic Foundations of Education (Volume 5)
Legal Foundations of Education (Volume 6)

Each volume covers the same set of key topics within education which also form the chapter titles, those topics/chapters are: Mapping the Field, Purposes of Education, Curriculum, Schools and Education Systems, Learning and Human Development, Teaching and Teacher Education, Assessment and Evaluation. This structure allows readers to study the volumes in isolation, by discipline, or laterally by topic, allowing for comparative, thematic readings of chapters across the volumes. Particular attention is paid to social justice issues throughout the volumes with the authors showing how each discipline works to combat social justice issues including race, gender, sexuality and disability.

Students, researchers and faculty in education departments rarely have a thorough knowledge of all of the foundational disciplines and yet foundations remains a staple aspect of teacher education and education programmes around the world. This set allows readers to focus in on the specific gaps in their knowledge.

Including 48 chapters written by renowned international scholars, this work will define the educational foundations for generations to come.

Bruce Maxwell is Professor of Education at the University of Montreal, Canada. He is the author of The Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education (2019) and co-editor of the Philosophical Inquiry in Education journal.

Lauren Bialystok is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada.