Education research and educational psychology in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – an analysis of scholarly journals

The paper investigates recent transnational and trans-disciplinary knowledge trajectories on the basis of scholarly journals by focusing on the contemporary relationships, commonalities and differences between education research and educational psychology in three European countries: Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. We investigate how education research and educational psychology are composed regarding authors, research topics and methodological standards. We also are interested in analysing how these disciplines are formed according to their mutual recognition and their specific communication patterns. The investigation is based on 70 more recent volumes of eight journals of education research and educational psychology, which are analysed according to social and disciplinary affiliation of authors and the methodological focus of articles. As a preliminary result of work in progress we identify different research patterns regarding nations and cultures on the one hand and regarding disciplines on the other.

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Introduction and Theoretical Background
The diversity of disciplinary cultures in education research, and their relationship to psychology do not only depend on particular scholars, but also on national, cultural, and infra-structural figurations, which give education research a particular shape (Depaepe, 1989;1993).In the context of further differentiation and development of universities and academic disciplines, contemporary education research also shows different theoretical and methodological textures in different countries and cultures.Therefore, we assume that the intellectual and social shape of education research is formed by particular national and cultural backgrounds (Keiner & Schriewer, 2000;Keiner, 2010).
At the same time education research emphasises its interdisciplinary profile and it cultivates intensive relationships with neighbouring disciplines like philosophy, sociology, history or psychology (Furlong & Lawn, 2010).These relationships vary according to space and time, histories and cultures.
At present (educational) psychology gains special importance and high attractiveness for education research (Smeyers & Depaepe, 2013) -as indicated, e.g., by the controversies about evidence-based research and large scale assessment projects and their (mainly quantitative) methodologies regarding the performance of national educational systems.One reason for this attractiveness might be that psychology was rather successful in professionalising theoretically and methodologically.It was able to streamline its disciplinary basis and profiles to a disciplinary self-referential, highly differentiated and internationally standardised field of study (cf. Ben-David & Collins, 1966, p. 465;Kluwe, 2005;Rammsayer, 2005).Furthermore, psychology worldwide developed a more scientific profile close to experimental designs common in natural sciences (Mills et al., 2006).Whereas education research in some countries in Europe was locked in its national language and structural peculiarities, it did not present an internationally recognised profile and it was often shaped by a more normative mode of pedagogical and reformative reflection.Therefore, education research was perceived as pre-modern and old-fashioned. 2 As a reaction, education research became forced to internationalise, to meet the given theoretical and methodological standards of psychology and social sciences, and education research topics became redefined according to psychological and sociological disciplinary perspectives and standards, theories and methods. 3 These aspects illustrate that education research and (educational) psychology deal rather differently with research topics and methodological standards.As to Bourdieu (1998, p. 19) these different modes indicate the degree of autonomy of a scientific field, which is defined according to its «ability to break external expectations or requests into a specific form, which constitutes its 'logic of work'».The decisive indicator of the degree of autonomy of such a field is its breaking strength, its translation power.In contrast to education research, the translation power of educational psychology seems to be rather high.While education research incorporates rather diverse and culturally restricted research cultures, (educational) psychology seems to display rather unified research cultures across national borders.These patterns are supported and further differentiated by several investigations in national as well as international perspectives (Prenzel, 2006;Rammsayer & Troche, 2005;Krapp, 2005;Kluwe, 2005;Herzog, 2005;Ash, 2004;Depaepe, 1993;Geuter, 1984;Lüer, 1991;Scheuerl, 1994;Norwich, 2000;Crozier, 2010).
According to Wagner and Wittrock (1991) we find three different patterns of theoretical and social formation of social sciences in the context of the establishment of the nation state.
(a) The model of «comprehensive social sciences» (France and francophone cultures) is characterised by inter-or trans-disciplinary traditions, a low degree of disciplinary self-reflection, but a high degree of originality, comprehensiveness, multifaceted scholarship.
(b) The model of «formalized disciplinary discourses» (Germany, Austria, German speaking Switzerland, Belgium) with a high intensity of self-reflecting discourses on its own disciplinary status and profile.(c) The model of «pragmatically specializing professions» (Anglo-Saxon countries), which comprise more pragmatic academic cultures focusing on particular professional, political and practical issues.Research themes and groups emerge and stabilise according to economic, social and political needs.These distinctions of research cultures are seen against the background of the establishment of the nation state.However, an alternative and corresponding distinction could be made regarding disciplinary patterns of scholarly communication.According to Ambrose (2006) and Meusburger (2009, p. 117f.) one could distinguish between «fractured-porous disciplines», characterised by internal dissensions about theories and methods, weak disciplinary demarcation, negative import balance, but high creativity and innovative potential, and «unified-insular disciplines» with a high degree of internal consensus about basic theories, methods, research standards and evaluation criteria, clear and strict disciplinary demarcation, low interdisciplinary exchange, 'normal science' and little creativity.For the first one education research could serve as an example, for the latter one educational psychology could be used.In addition, this distinction could be related to the distinctions made by Bourdieu: «Fractured-porous disciplines» are characterised by a high degree of heteronomy, «unified-insular disciplines» by a high degree of autonomy of problem definition.
This linkage of a national-cultural and a disciplinary perspective makes the analysis of two different disciplines in three different countries and research cultures a challenging project, which is not finished yet.
We refer to Germany, the United Kingdom (UK) and Italy due to systematic reasons.We do not take these countries as political entities with their particular borders and governments, but as cultural entities defined -in spite of all internal differences -by a common language, common history and disciplinary backgrounds.According to the Wagner and Wittrock scheme the German research pattern serves as an example for research cultures, where relatively autonomous disciplinary structures are prevailing in the intellectual discourses as well as in the academic life.As «formalized disciplinary discourse» it aims at disciplinary autonomy through demarcation, emphasises hermeneutical reflection in the form of the German Geisteswissenschaften or critical theory, and prefers qualitative research methodologies.Furthermore, education research in German speaking countries is relatively well investigated (see references in Keiner, 1999;regarding Switzerland cf. Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2001, 2011), whereas the more recent structures of educational psychology remain still a desideratum.In this context the question arises, if the contemporary education research in Germany still works according to this model, or is changing into the direction of a stronger 'internationalisation' and standardisation.We choose the UK not only because it represents a significant part of the Anglo-Saxon world, but also because education research in the UK is currently undergoing interesting changes from a more pragmatic, policy-oriented field of study to a field with intensified self-reflections about the epistemological and disciplinary basis of education research (Lawn & Furlong, 2009;Furlong & Lawn, 2010) including the question of disciplinary self-governance.According to the Wagner and Wittrock scheme the UK research pattern can be conceptualized as a model of «pragmatically specializing professions», which displays a combination of practical know-how, experience and empirical research as well as varied and flexible interdisciplinary and practical connections.The UK is to some extent used as contrast to the German pattern.
As there are some investigations about education research in France available (Schriewer & Keiner, 1993;Keiner & Schriewer, 2000), we wondered if another country with Roman language, but different political history -i.e.Italy -could display different results or could be subsumed under one of the disciplinary patterns.Furthermore, Italian education research seems to be a blind spot.Yet, we find some textbooks and histories about Italian education research, however, mainly in Italian language, and mainly history of disciplinary heroes or philosophical ideas and strands. 4However, we rarely find investigations on the more recent empirical status, composition, structure and infrastructural conditions of education research (cf.Cambi, 2008, pp. 7, 103;Trisciuzzi, 2002, p. 219;Bellatalla & Genovesi, 2006, p. 14; as an emancipatory perspective see Baldacci, 2003, p. 9).Italian education research, and to a large extent also educational psychology, seem to remain largely invisible -at least in quantitative terms -on a European or international landscape.These challenges motivated our choices of countries.In addition, our interests in processes of European diversification, integration and Europeanization led us to restrict our investigations on Europe.This European perspective as well as pragmatic reasons according to some pioneering investigations, work in progress and problems in getting reliable data made it necessary to restrict the time span under consideration and to accept some imbalances at the present stage of our investigations.
The patterns regarding education research in Germany and France already analysed (e.g.Keiner & Schriewer, 2000), are taken as background, to ask for the particular relationship between education research and educational psychology.
In the context of these analyses we aim at investigating the communication patterns of education research and educational psychology within scholarly journals in Germany, UK and Italy.
In order to investigate transnational and trans-disciplinary knowledge trajectories we focus on the contemporary relationships, the commonalities and the differences, between education research and educational psychology.We are interested in analysing how these disciplines are formed according to their mutual recognition and their specific communication patterns, and how these patterns could be interpreted.Which kinds of methods are used by the authors of the respective journals?Can we find paradigmatic directions, degrees of diversity, cross-disciplinary publication, etc.?

Methodological Considerations, Samples and Sources
The first methodological problem we face is to identify and to frame education research and educational psychology as disciplinary entities.We are not able here to investigate the relationship between psychology and educational psychology, and we are aware of the problem of a supposed asymmetry in relating education research as a full and educational psychology as a partial discipline.However, we do not regard this problem as a systematic fault.We assume (A) that the term education -a core subject both in education research and educational psychology -serves as a 'tertium comparationis'.Both units to be compared focus upon a phenomenon as a common subject which constitutes their (full or part-) disciplinary foundation.This common ground serves as a precondition (tertium) to distinguish specific -educational and psychological -disciplinary forms of dealing with this common ground -'education' (Schriewer, 1990).(B) We refer to sources which represent the respective disciplinary core as a significant part within the respective disciplines.And (C) the sources stand for education research primarily representing 'general' or 'foundations, of' education, which could be seen as a partial discipline of education research -at least in Germany (Keiner, 1999).
A second problem addresses the linguistic and terminological background.The terms Scienza dell' Educazione or Pedagogia in Italy, Erziehungswissenschaft, Pädagogik or Bildungsforschung in Germany or Educational studies, Educational research or Education Research in the Anglo-Saxon world have different connotations as they refer to culturally different entities.Concepts, terms and connotations are intensively discussed within the countries and cultures under investigation. 5However, there is no dictionary yet, which provides a theoretically informed and contextualised translation both regarding signs and senses.As this text is in English we decided to use the term education research in a broad sense, which includes philosophical reflection, field and case studies as well as experimental designs focusing upon educational issues and the methodological and epistemological modes of their construction, deconstruction and reconstruction.
The third problem is to identify the countries or cultures that are supposed to be compared.In order to identify national and cultural variations of the disciplinary and national communication patterns between education research and educational psychology we compare three different countries: Germany, Italy and the UK.These countries represent specific patterns of theoretical and social formation of social sciences in the context of the establishment of the nation state.Germany represents the culture of formalized disciplines.As for France, representing the culture of comprehensive social sciences in the field of the Roman languages, some analyses regarding education research are already available, we decided to focus upon Italy, which has not yet been investigated in a way we aim to do.The UK represents a significant part of the Anglo-Saxon world and its culture of pragmatically specializing professions.However, we are aware of the problem that the UK cannot be conceived only as an indicator for the big Anglo-Saxon world -even if this world is named 'international'-, and Italy does not stand as an example for the 'Roman' culture.At this stage of our investigation, we decided to present the results of first steps into a new field by using a reliable instrument, which at the end might guide us into more questions than answers, challenging more and deeper investigations and interpretations.

Scholarly journals selected
The fourth problem concerns the sources.As disciplinary communication is presented predominantly in scholarly journals (Schriewer & Keiner, 1993;Keiner, 1999), we take main articles of such journals as our main source.We did not take 'education research' as it is categorised by the SSCI comprising more than 200 journals.We took a few core scholarly journals highly accepted and recognised by educational researchers and their associations.For Germany we use four journals (two from each discipline) for 2004-2009 as source.The UK is represented by two journals (one from each discipline) from 2000 to 2010.For Italy we considered two journals (one from each discipline) from 1997 to 2008, being aware that the Italian education research field and its journals are rather diverse.Differences regarding the number of selected journals per country or the volumes considered are due to the fact that we present work in progress.Due to the availability of volumes and different stages of our project we could not yet homogenise the time span and the amount of journals considered.
That also means that we will interpret our findings rather cautiously and in an explorative perspective.We are aware of our limited approach.
The journal «Zeitschrift für Pädagogik is one of the core journals of German education research with a long history representing 'geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik' for a start and since the 1970es adopted to methodological reforms, e.g.critical theory and empirical research.The Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft represents the interdisciplinary character of education research.It claims for an empirical and international, research oriented profile according to the international standards of social sciences.
The educational psychology is represented by Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht (PEU) and Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie (ZPP).
The journal Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht takes up and communicates psychological research results in the fields of education, counseling and instruction.It just celebrates its 60th anniversary.The journal is affiliated to the German association of Psychology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie) (Köller, Zimmermann & Altschütz, 2013).The Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie refers to the broad field of educational psychology.The journal is not only listed in the Social Sciences Citation Index, but also in many other databases and services (Dickhäuser, Dinger & Nitsche, 2013).
Regarding Italy the situation is more complex.There, scholarly journals are primarily affiliated to a particular network, which -seen from outside -appears more as a journal of a fraction, even of an 'invisible college' than as a journal, which represents a broad academic community and serves as its commonly recognised scholarly discursive platform.Our own investigations and several talks with experts made us aware of the fact, that our journals' choice does not represent «the» Italian education research community, but more a special, but significant fraction.However, as work in progress we present a first step and will draw cautious interpretations and conclusions.We refer to the journal Ricerche Pedagogiche (R.P.), which is disciplinarily affiliated to education research.According to assessment of experts it has a high reputation among scholars and is well recognised, although the majority of the editorial staff is professors from the University of Ferrara.The journal represents a dominant Italian tradition of literary, theoretical and philosophical thinking and debating which places educational issues into a broad horizon of arts, literature, music and life style.
The educational psychology is represented by the journal Psicologia e scuola.Giornale italiano di psicologia dell'educazione e pedagogia sperimentale (P.e.S).It is the only Italian journal which has the terms «psicologia dell'educazione» and «pedagogia sperimentale» in its title.Psicologia e scuola is conceptualised as a journal of educational psychology and experimental pedagogy primarily focussing on school.The journal, therefore, aims at relating research, school and didactics in order to provide useful instruments and sources both for researchers and for teachers' formation and daily work in classrooms.
For the United Kingdom we chose the British Journal of Educational Psychology (BJEP) and the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) to represent the disciplines under investigation.There are many indicators that British Educational Research Journal represents the education research discourse in the UK and the British Journal of Educational Psychology stands for the educational psychology (Crozier, 2010, p. 35;Lawn & Furlong, 2007, p. 67f.).In addition, both journals also represent the national association for educational psychology (within the British Psychological Society) or the British Educational Research association respectively, and show therefore a high significance in representing their respective disciplinary realm.

Exploitation Procedures, Indicators and Categories Used
The data of our investigations are mainly taken from the scholarly journals sketched above.First of all we tried to get information the author or article itself provided.However, the sources did not always give the information we were looking for, especially regarding authors.Therefore, we had to use substituting sources.The self-description of the authors often referred to current projects and their (mainly interdisciplinary) careers.Therefore we often had to attribute them to the disciplinary category 'intersectional fields'.It also was not always possible to get the information about an author valid for the time the article was published.We then substituted the missing value by the information next available.Our investigation is not only based on titles or abstracts, but on the full article. 6 We exploited the journals and substituting sources according to two significant dimensions: a) the social dimension which provides information about the authors, their academic status and their disciplinary affiliation and b) the methodological dimension, which provides information about the research methods used.
Regarding the social dimension we are interested, e.g., whether the journals are a medium of academic careers or mouthpiece of the 'upper' academic establishment, as indicated by status.Being aware of the different infrastructures and academic levels of universities in the three countries we decided to use rather broad categories for comparisons.Therefore, we only distinguished between professors, assistants, i.e. non-professorial staff in research and teaching (which includes the 'lecturer' in the UK, the German 'Mittelbau' and the 'ricercatore' and 'docente' in Italy), and practitioners.Professors and non-professors mirror at least two significant levels of the internal academic career, and practitioners indicate the degree of social and intellectual reference to educational practical fields.
Regarding the disciplinary affiliation we used a modified structure of categories already proved to be methodologically distinctive and theoretically fruitful for comparative analyses on education research (Schriewer & Keiner, 1992;1993;Keiner, 1999;Keiner & Schriewer, 2000).It consists of four elements: The category 'education research' is used for all authors affiliated to Education and its partial disciplines.To '(educational) psychology' we added all authors with a clear self-reported or substituted current disciplinary affiliation to educational psychology and neighboring fields, e.g.developmental psychology.We also added authors from the 'mother discipline' psychology to this category, assuming that they are related to education by their subject.'Intersectional fields' collect authors who report at least a double disciplinary reference one of them being education research, as it is common e.g. for didactics, but also for sociology of education.In this respect educational psychology also could be seen as an intersectional field, and we did so in former publications (ibid.).The particular research question here, however, made it necessary to extract educational psychology and treat it as a separate category and to abstain from further differentiating the remaining disciplines, -like natural sciences as well as philosophy, arts, literature and more.
Regarding the methodological dimension we are interested in the use of research methods indicating disciplinary profiles and dominant methodological approaches.We distinguish an analytical, a historical, an empirical and a comparative access to the topic the article addresses.Regarding empirical methods we additionally distinguish between qualitative, quantitative and mixed method approaches.We decided to categorise only once according to the main methodological focus.This classification is applied to both education research and educational psychology articles.

Social, Disciplinary and Methodological Differences and Commonalities
Social and disciplinary affiliation of authors First, we present our findings regarding the social and disciplinary affiliation of authors.In doing so, we refer to 826 authors in German education research journals and 589 authors in German educational psychology journals (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009).4.1 % and 10.5 % of the authors of the respective journals we could not identify and were classified as missing.For Italy we count 332 authors publishing in the education research and 591 in the educational psychology journal (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008).Whereas the share of unidentified authors remains 8.1 % regarding the education research journal it comes to 46 % when the educational psychology journal is considered.This is due to the facts that this educational psychology journal rather provides information about the authors and it also shows a relatively high rate of co-authored articles.We find a similar but less pronounced situation in the UK, where we collected 940 authors from the education research and 1,050 authors from the educational psychology journal (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010).Regarding Education 23.8 % and regarding Psychology 34.2 % of all authors count as missing.
In both German education research journals about 15 % of the authors have an international background, i.e. they come from Switzerland and Austria, but also from other European and non-European countries.About 3 % of the articles are published in English.International and empirical research project orientation is also indicated by co-authorship.Regarding the Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 46 % of the articles are written by more than one author, whereas the more traditional Zeitschrift für Pädagogik holds a respective share of 37 %.
Looking at the educational psychology journals we find an even lower share of authors from abroad than in education research journals -about 10 %.The percentage of articles published in English remains nearly the same, however, more than 80 % of the articles are published by more than one author.
That means that both disciplinary branches are networking internationally.However, joint research projects -indicated by the degree of co-authorshipsare more pronounced in the German journals of educational psychology.
A similar tendency -on a significant lower level -we find in Italy.The share of non-Italian authors, is not more than 3 to 4 % in both disciplinary branches.In the selected education journal they primarily come from Roman speaking countries, whereas in the journal of educational psychology also authors from English speaking countries publish.Regarding co-authorship, the branches differ significantly.Almost all articles in the education research journal (97 %) are written by one single author, whereas 47 % of the articles published in the educational psychology journal have more than one author.
This indicates that both discourses in education research and educational psychology are quite narrow regarding authors' national institutional affiliation and probably center around national educational problems.As co-authorship indicates a culture of investigation in joint research projects (see already Smith, 1958;De Solla Price, 1963;Mendenhall & Higbee, 1982;Over, 1982) as it is common in mainly empirical international psychological research contexts, the educational psychology journal in tendency follows this direction (see also Ball 1983, esp. p. 998).The education research journal, however, seems to cultivate the individual author, the solipsistic hero of educational reflection.
When we look to the UK, most of the authors in the education research journal come from the UK.Also in the case of international cooperation -indicated by co-authorship -we find that internationally composed teams of authors contain a remarkable high share of scholars from Belgium and the Netherlands; however, at least one author origins from the UK.The educational psychology journal, in contrast, is more open in this respect, and shows a more diverse authorship not 'dominated' by authors from the UK.Compared to the education research journal it shows a significantly broader expanded and internationalised scholarly networking.Although co-authorship seems to be rather common in the UK, the educational psychology journal has a significant higher average of co-authors (2.7 per article) as compared to the education research journal (2.1 per article).Especially during the last years articles published by the single authors decreased continuously in the educational psychology journal.This indicates that educational psychology in the UK is more research oriented according to the standards of social and natural sciences and increasingly collaborates in research networks.
Table 1 displays the distribution of authors of German, Italian and UK education research and educational psychology scholarly journals according to their organisational affiliation and academic position.

Germany
Italy UK The percentage of practitioners writing in education research as well as in educational psychology journals is very low.In Germany and the UK it is 1 to 4 %; only in Italy almost 20 % of authors come from practical fields.The amount of unidentified, missing authors might contribute to this low share (and probably might influence also the UK results), but it clearly indicates a high concentration of authors from universities.This finding can be interpreted as a significant coincidence or convergence of scholarly communication in journals and infrastructural organisation at universities.University members define the disciplinary discourse.In Italy, teachers, school directors and other practitioners like psychotherapists contribute to the disciplinary discourses.We assume that the differentiation process separating professionals working in educational practical fields from the scholarly discourse located at universities still continues or is overlapped by network structures beyond universities.The British authors of both journals primarily are affiliated to educational depart-ments in universities, some to schools of education and research groups.Disregarding the high amount of unidentified authors, educational or psychological practitioners are hardly represented in these journals.They primarily appear as co-authors together with a university member, probably as a gate-keeper to the journal and the academic discourse.However, when looking at the biographical background of authors especially in the educational research journal, it does not really surprise, that a lot of university members are former teachers.This fact also indicates that in the UK education research is biographically and also thematically very close to educational practice and teacher training.

ZfE
It is also interesting to see that in almost all scholarly journals the professors hold the majority, whereas the assistants, commonly regarded as the up-climbing, dynamic, research oriented group have a minor share.However, comparing education research and educational psychology journals, this distance is more pronounced in education research journals, especially regarding those in the UK.This alludes to a flatter institutional and status hierarchy, to a structure much more based on research and research projects in educational psychology, whereas educational research journals seem to cultivate rather a paternalistic or maternalistic structure.Because of the high amount of missing authors and the many co-authored articles in the UK and in the educational psychology journal in Italy we expect a further confirmation of this interpretation.
Table 2 displays the disciplinary affiliation of authors writing in the education research and educational psychology journals considered.We have to mention that the number of missing values slightly increases due to the fact that the status and institutional affiliation of an author is easier to find or to reconstruct than his/her disciplinary affiliation.Therefore, we cannot avoid some biased distributions; however, the amount of authors identified seems to be large enough to draw some tentative, cautious conclusions.
A first look at table 2 shows that the disciplinary affiliation of the respective journal's authors coincides with the disciplinary claim of the respective journal in all three countries.Education researchers primarily publish in education research journals, whereas (educational) psychologists publish in educational psychology journals.
The highest degree of detachment we find in Italy.80 % of authors of the education research journal are educationists; only 3 % belong to educational psychology.The journal of educational psychology appears the other way round.Even 90 % of its authors are (educational) psychologists, and only 7 % belong to education research.Authors from other disciplinary areas remain rather underrepresented in both journals; in the education research journal it is some from didactics, most from history, literature and philology.

Germany
Italy UK Table

2: Distribution of authors of German, Italian and UK education research and educational psychology scholarly journals according to their disciplinary affiliation (percentages in italics)
In the UK we find a similar correlative structure, which is, however, less pronounced and more overlapping.There it is 68 % of (educational) psychology authors writing in the educational psychology journal.However, nearly 20 % of the authors are affiliated to education research.When looking at the education research journal we find an even more pronounced cross-or inter-disciplinary discourse.Only 48 % of the authors belong to education research.However, the other ones belong to a minor extent to (educational) psychology (10 %), but to intersectional fields, i.e. didactics, educational sociology etc. (20 %), and to other disciplines, especially social sciences (22 %).We find more interesting aspects, if we compare the former and the current disciplinary affiliation of the authors according to their academic biography.Many of them changed their discipline, however, mainly from psychology to education, whereas authors from an education research background change hardly to another disciplines, e.g.educational psychology.If they do, they move to intersectional fields.Thus, one could raise the pointed question, whether (educational) psychology might serves as a 'brain drain', education research as a 'brain gain' discipline.
The German journals draw an intermediate picture.Whereas 57 % of the authors of the more traditional Zeitschrift für Pädagogik belong to education research, the discipline, the journal for decades represented, the younger and social sciences oriented Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft has only 37 % of authors affiliated to the 'own' discipline.In both journals authors from intersectional fields (educational sociology, but also the so called 'Bildungsforschung' etc.) and other disciplines (social sciences, philosophy, history etc.) play a significant part in education research communication.Didactics is rather underrepresented.Authors explicitly affiliated with (educational) psychology, however, only amount to 8 %; some of them might have found a disciplinary home in 'Bildungsforschung'.The German journals of educational psychology, display a picture regarding their own discipline similar to the one of the UK.60 or 66 % of their authors respectively are affiliated to educational psychology, the discipline the journals are dedicated to.They differ, however, when the authors from referring disciplines are considered.It is not education research where the second-largest group of authors are coming from, but intersectional fields, where the author is affiliated to at least two referential disciplines.
Regarding the relationship between education research and educational psychology one can conclude now, that we find a more overlapping and integrating disciplinary discourse in the UK, more detached discourses in Germany, and rather disconnected disciplinary communications in Italy.

: Distribution of research methods used in main articles of German, Italian and UK education research and educational psychology scholarly journals (percentages in italics)
The figures in table 3 show the German education research journals according to their tradition and program.Whereas the more traditional Zeitschrift für Pädagogik publishes only 36 % of articles with a clear empirical focus, the equivalent share amounts to 58 % in the younger, more social sciences oriented Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft. Almost 50 % of the articles of the Zeitschrift für Pädagogik can be attributed to a mode of theoretical-analytical reflection, focusing e.g. on basic concepts of education and educational studies.The use of other methods is also pronounced, especially when the Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is considered.A view on the German educational psychology journals reveals the opposite.More than 90 % of the articles use empirical, and we can add here: quantitative methods.Theoretical reflection dwindles to less than 10 %.That means, methodological approaches and research methods used are the most significant indicators to distinguish clearly particular research cultures in Germany.This finding, however, does not hold true regarding the UK, where education research as well as educational psychology display a very high share of articles with an empirical focus -92 % in education research, 97 % in educational psychology.The disciplinary distinction, however, appears on more detailed levels.
On the one hand we look at topics addressed.In contrast to educational psychology we find only few articles in the education research journal dealing with their own discipline, its research subjects and the role of the education researcher (Hammersley, 2008;Rees et al., 2007) -also in the context of the policy program of 'research-capacity building' in Education across the UK.Education research in the UK did not only have to adopt methodological and theoretical influences from other disciplines since the 1980s (Lawn & Furlong, 2010, p. 8), but also to adapt to changed research funding programs, preferences and sources, which primarily supported empirical, 'evidence based' research (ibid., p. 9).The influence of such contexts, however, seems to affect the profile of the journal in general.Policy and government's education agenda are important points of reference in the British education research journal.The triad of research, policy and practice seems to serve as a universal code of close ties suggesting processes of linear transformations of one element into the other.This close reference of education research to current policy and practice is also proven by the fact, that we cannot find a continuing discussion about methodological and historical issues (exemptions are Thomas &James, 2006 andBurke, 2010).

: Distribution of empirical research methods used in main articles of German, Italian and UK education research and educational psychology scholarly journals, differentiated according to quantitative and qualitative methods (percentages in italics)
On the second hand, therefore, we look whether quantitative or qualitative methods are used.Table 4 shows that educational psychology in the UK nearly exclusively works in a quantitative empirical research world, whereas education research shows a higher methodological diversity including a variety of qualitative and mixed methods.That means that the disciplinary profile of educa-tional psychology in the UK is close to psychology and its methodological research standards, style of argumentation and design of problems and subjects.Education research does not show such a strictly profiled disciplinary strand.Although analytical approaches and philosophical reflections are hardly to be found, it presents a higher diversity and variety regarding methodology and conceptualization of topics.Probably due to the intention of keeping complexity and to serve the triad research-policy-practice, the education research journal contains a rather high share of qualitative and mixed methods approaches.
A similar picture is presented by the German figures in table 4. Whereas educational psychology to a large extent is defined by the use of quantitative empirical methods, education research is structured by methodological diversity.This diversity, however, does not only follow the quantitative-qualitative-scheme, but also includes historical, comparative and analytical, theoretical and reflecting perspectives on educational issues -the latter especially to be found in the Zeitschrift für Pädagogik.
Against the background of these German and UK patterns, Italy shows rather unexpected distributions.The use of and reference to empirical research methods in the Italian education research journal (table 3 and 4) tends to zero; the historical perspective adds up to not more than 9 % of the articles, and the analytical mode of discussing educational issues holds the vast majority (86 % of all articles).This means, that -especially in the case of the Italian education research journal -as style of thinking, discussing and reasoning is prevailing, which is close to genres and modes of literate novels, rhetorical essays, learned reflection, metaphorical modelling, ideographical reconstruction and hermeneutical understanding.It forms a unique mode of thinking, to some extent close to the German Geisteswissenschaften, but more cultivating the history of arts, literature, philology and philosophy they emerged from, and closely related to practical issues of education.This mode of thinking also could explain the difficulties of Italian education research to meet the rules and standards of discourses dominated by English speaking research cultures, to be recognised by the international research community, and to participate in and critically contribute to the international mainstream of education research.However, we have to remember that the journal of education research in Italy considered here is only one out of different others belonging to diverse fractions.
The view on the figures of the Italian journal of educational psychology in table 3 shows the unique mode of thinking also regarding this discipline.Only 38 % of the articles use empirical methods; the remaining part is taken by analytical methods, which include the ones mentioned above added by didactical and professional recommendations and advice.If empirical methods are used in Italian educational psychology, they are -as table 4 shows -nearly exclusively quantitative methods.We assume that educational psychology is fractioned within the journal considered into researching and reflecting methods used.As 90 % of the authors (see table 2) are affiliated with educational psychology these fractions also could affect social roles and the disciplinary profile.It might also indicate an on-going process of an increasing orientation to internationally recognised and accepted research standards of (educational) psychology -a process of 'professionalization', narrowing and 'purification' of educational psychology in Italy into the direction of internationally standardised (quantitative) empirical research.

Conclusion
Comparing the three countries, we find at a first glance the expected different histories both education research and educational psychology emerged from and are embedded in.We identify different research cultures regarding nations and cultures on the one hand and regarding disciplines on the other.
With regard to organisational affiliation we find that the percentage of practitioners writing in education research as well as in educational psychology journals is rather low.However, we can assume that authors writing in education research journals might have a biographical background as schoolteachers to a larger extent than authors writing in journals of educational psychology.In addition, the composition of academic positions indicates a more flat institutional and status hierarchy, more oriented at research and research projects in educational psychology, whereas educational research journals seem to cultivate a more paternalistic (or maternalistic) structure.
With regard to disciplinary affiliation of authors, i.e., the relationship between education research and educational psychology, we find a more overlapping and integrating disciplinary discourse in the UK, more detached discourses in Germany, and rather disconnected disciplinary communications in Italy.
The indicator 'quantitative or qualitative research methods used' provided the most distinctive results.Educational psychology in the UK as well as in Germany nearly exclusively works in a quantitative empirical research world, whereas education research shows a higher methodological diversity including a variety of qualitative and mixed methods.For Italy, however, we found -in spite of methodological problems -unexpected results.Here a unique mode of thinking seems to prevail, more cultivating the history of arts, literature, philology and philosophy, closely related to practical phenomena and issues of education.This mode of thinking is significantly more pronounced when the journal of education research is considered, but also holds a high share regarding the journal of educational psychology.
Looking at nations and academic cultures, both education research and educational psychology follow the pattern of a more disciplinary orientation in Germany and a more pragmatic, profession-oriented perspective in the UK.This orientation, however, is less pronounced in view of educational psychology.There, we find a more transnational field of study, whose culture depends more T h e m a on standardised criteria of sound research and on a methodologically structured, differentiated and integrated self-governing scientific community.This means, educational psychology already seems to transcend national-cultural peculiarities through thematic integration and exclusion, methodological rigour and disciplined scientific self-governance, whereas education research to a higher extent depends on and is embedded in national or linguistic academic cultures.Educational psychology is more oriented on methods, research and disciplinary closeness, whereas education research focuses upon institutional and professional improvement via reformative reflection or applied research (see also Herzog, 2005).Italy probably indicates the problems of transition.
Education research, thus, could belong to the «fractured-porous disciplines», characterised by internal dissents about theories and methods, weak disciplinary demarcation, negative import balance, but high creativity and innovative potential.Educational psychology, on the other hand, could be added to the group of «unified-insular disciplines» with a high degree of internal consensus about basic theories, methods, research standards and evaluation criteria, clear and strict disciplinary demarcation, low interdisciplinary exchange, 'normal science' and little creativity.(Meusburger, 2009, p. 117f;Ambrose, 2006).Referring to Bourdieu one could say: «Fractured-porous disciplines» are characterised by a high degree of heteronomy, «unified-insular disciplines» by a high degree of autonomy of problem definition.This distinction also indicates that heteronomy -in case of education research -is defined and balanced by its close connection to the expectations of practical fields, professions, public and policy -as it is shown by topics the articles address.Education research resonates according to the up-to-date educational problems.This could lead to significant consequences.Educational organisations, schools, administration, even universities provide support and predictability in times of external chance.Internal dissents and weak disciplinary demarcations indicate a conceptual vacuum, which is filled with external societal, especially organisational references and ends in a weak academic and scientific reputation.The (relative) autonomy, the 'breaking strength' of educational psychology as a 'unified-insular discipline' to a lesser extent depends from practical, professional or political expectations, but from its clear connection to psychology and, especially, from its high degree of methodological, theoretical and thematic 'structuredness', which unifies and delineates a scientific community.Such a scientific community needs universities and other organisations as infrastructural conditions, but works -as a scientific community -beyond and relatively independent from organisational regulations.Its core and centring media are self-regulated conferences, associations and, especially: scientific or scholarly journals.
This relative autonomy, scientific reputation, disciplinary identity, and infrastructural stability make educational psychology attractive for education research.However, the question is, whether education research is able and willing to pay the price for normalisation and standardisation in order to become a «unified-insular discipline».
T h e m a If the increasing importance of psychology within education research is caused by the attraction of its reputation, identity, stability, and the strict methodological construction of (preliminary) certainty, education research indeed appears as a field necessary to be unlocked and to be lifted out from national, cultural and linguistic (self-)restrictions to the modernity of academic disciplines.However, one also could argue historically, that the disciplinary identity of education research might be based on the process of scientification and purification of (educational) psychology, in which education research cared and cultivated the rest psychology and other disciplines left over.This 'rest' could also be seen as the treasure trove for new questions, discerning knowledge, creative solutions and useful application.Against this background, recognised differences could turn to a mutual appreciation of scholarly cultivated diversity, which regards transnational and trans-disciplinary knowledge trajectories as a productive tension aiming at investigating and enlightening the vague phenomenon to be jointly addressed by research: education.
Notes 1 Many thanks to Hannah Hercksen, Daniela Vecere and Annemarie Haberecht for their support. 2One of these countries was Germany.As previous analyses show, education research in Germany, disciplinary framed and based upon the cognitive instruments of the Geisteswissenschaften, traditionally aimed at reflecting phenomena of practical fields for practical fields and reverse -not as empirical education research, but as a practical oriented and value-based field of study.The so called 'realistic turn' (Roth, 1962), i.e. the introduction of methods, standards and knowledge of social sciences, especially from the Anglo-Saxon world, was important to legitimise, dynamise and evaluate the educational reforms, which took place in Germany from the mid-1960s to the end-1970s.However, this process did not produce a substantial change in the theoretical and methodological modes of thinking and researching in general until the 1990s in Germany.The former 'geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik' became substituted by a critical, emancipatory reflection, based on social-philosophy modo Habermas, and the empirical research options became disciplinary framed by educational sociology -mainly within departments of sociology -, or educational psychology -mainly within departments of psychology -, or were organised within big interdisciplinary research institutes.Against this background, educational psychology as a discipline defining their methodological paradigms according to experimental and empirical research even according to natural sciences, was perceived as threatening education research's self-conception or as contributing to its disciplinary marginalisation.At present in Germany we even find complaints about the fact that more and more psychologically trained scholars take over professorships of education research.This also means that the relationship between education research and educational psychology indicates the degree of self-assurance and the form of the disciplinary profile of education research itself. 3Due to limited space, we are not able to discuss the historical development and institutionalisation of psychology and educational psychology in detail.Regarding German speaking countries see Kluwe, 2005;Rammsayer, 2005;Herzog, 2005;Ash, 2004;Lüer, 1991; regarding English-speaking countries see Crozier, 2010;Calfee, 2006;Mayer, 2001;Wittrock, 1992;Berliner, 1992; regarding Italy see De Bartolomeis, 1969;p. 7;Visalberghi, 1978, p. 15;Cambi, 2008, p. 32,; T h e m a Bellatalla & Genovesi, 2006, p. 303.In view of the European context see Gretler, 1999.In addition, education research recently also intensifies research which serves the demands of education policy and administration; see Dedering, 2009; Ozga, 2013; Grek & Ozga,  2009.  As an exception: Böhm & Flores D'Arcais (1979), as a history of Italian Education in German language.Wiater, Belardi, Frabboni & Wallnöfer (2010, p. 8) note that the Italian education research remains rather isolated not only due to linguistic reasons, but also due to its particular historical and cultural backgrounds. 5See Visalberghi, 1978, p. 265;Böhm, 1988;Fornaca, 1989, p. 17;Genovesi, 2005;Bellatalla & Genovesi, 2006, p. 5 (Italy); Zedler & Döbert, 2010;Merkens, 2006; regarding study courses: Grunert, 2012 (Germany); Elkind, 1999 (Anglosaxon);Ball, (1983) describes educational psychology even as academic chameleon. 6Until now we could not cross-validate our findings or even calculate an inter-coder reliability coefficient yet, but as we work on the same institutional place it was possible to continuously talk about the attribution criteria and, thus, at least to communicatively validate our research procedures.Ricerca educativa e psicologia dell'educazione in Germania, Italia e Gran Bretagna -un'analisi delle riviste scientifiche