La construcción de una disciplina: evolución de la didáctica de las ciencias sociales en España en comparación con el contexto internacional.

This paper seeks to trace the evolution of the Social Studies Education since its birth as academic and scientific discipline until now. This analysis takes the Spanish case as starting point, and widens its observations to some international context, such as Germany, France, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Chile. The main aim of this paper is to point out the specific contributions that have shaped the educational research and the current status of the issue of the discipline. The methodology followed in this work has been based on a thorough review of the national and international scientific literature related to the topic. The selection of the literature that supports the arguments made along the paper attended to one specific criteria: the high degree of expertise of the authors and the quality of their contributions in the field. This analysis indicates that one of the biggest issues that the discipline has is the fact that, although the main research problems are shared, there is a lack of communication and a sort of scientific isolation among the different international contexts and scientific communities. That cause a low degree of consensus regarding essential aspects of the discipline, such as epistemological or methodological issues. It is therefore necessary a deep reflection on the matter to create a solid theoretical and methodological corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]