Epistemologia educaţiei, ca parte, deopotrivă, a disciplinei filosofiei educaţiei (prin urmare, aparţinând domeniului filosofiei), poate să se constituie şi ca disciplină în cadrul ştiinţelor educaţiei. Un parcurs similar l-au avut şi alte discipline considerate a fi „de graniţă” şi având o abordare interdisciplinară, care fac parte în acelaşi timp din două discipline distincte, cum ar fi, de exemplu, sociologia educaţiei, care este, deopotrivă, o ramură a sociologiei dar şi o subdisciplină a ştiinţelor educaţiei. Prin urmare, în contextul actual, de hibridare metodologică, conceptuală şi disciplinară, rolul epistemologiei educaţiei este acela de a întemeia cunoaşterea din domeniul ştiinţelor educaţiei; ea are, de asemenea, un rol de fundamentare normativă, evidenţiind rolul şi importanţa enunţurilor celor mai generale ale ştiinţei – axiome, legi, principii şi reguli, în întemeierea critică a cunoaşterii şi legătura acestor legităţi cu praxis-ul educaţional. De asemenea, aspecte legate de sursele cunoaşterii în educaţie, de tipurile şi modalităţile de cunoaştere specifice acestor ştiinţe, de analiza critică a conceptelor, principiilor, legităţilor educaţiei, constituie un demers epistemologic în câmpul educaţiei, care are scop de clarificare, de elucidare şi întemeiere a cunoaşterii.

From an epistemological perspective the scientific research in the area of education sciences has some specific characteristics we would like to emphasize in this article, in a synthetic approach. One of the purposes considered is to briefly present some of the most recurrent forms of knowledge in the field of education, namely: reflexive, material, taxonomic, experimental and statistical knowledge. We will emphasise the specificity of each approach and we will insist on the forms encountered in the education sciences unlike the ones belonging to other fields of human knowledge. Approaching the sources of knowledge is an action specific of the education epistemology by which we intend to analyse the historical evolution of these problems within the education sciences. The perspective we propose combines the forms of scientific knowledge and the sources of such knowledge, providing a synthetic picture of the various forms and sources of knowledge, as a foundation of research and investigations in the epistemic field of education. The perspective proposed in this article starts from the premise that the ontological assumptions (concerning the nature of reality and the nature of things, of the realities subject to scientific investigation) give rise to epistemological assumptions – within the meaning of types of research and investigation of the nature of reality and nature of things. The latter, at their turn, lead to considerations about methodology and the investigation, analysis and collection of the data about these realities. The field of axiology in education is closely connected to ontology and epistemology. Such perspective on the reality investigated by science (by the research specific of education sciences) helps us to understand the research methods as a way of understanding the world, the actual educational reality investigated by research and that originates from several sources. These sources are the raw material that underlies knowledge and scientific research.