In 1936 Norway's parliament (Stortinget) established a tenured professorship in pedagogical sciences at the University of Oslo. This decree basically called the Institute for Educational Research into existence. Until 1963, the department fell under the Faculty of Arts, thereafter in the Faculty for Social Sciences and finally in 1996 the Institute for Educational Research became an intrinsic part of the Faculty of Education.

The department has a staff of roughly 60 and a student body of 1100 students in foundation, intermediate and advanced-level programmes in education, as well as students in the professional education programme.

Research into educational history has always been a central theme at the department. At the start of the department's history, research into educational psychology had a strong place, which has developed into long-term studies of motivational and developmental psychology.

After 1970 didactics, including curriculum-studies, began to develop into a strong discipline at the department. The growth of university instruction - a theme throughout the University of Oslo - has had a connection to the field of didactics, but, due to the field's rapid growth, university instruction must now be considered a separate subject area.

During the 1970s the department took up studies of educational sociology, multicultural education and comparative educational studies. The department began offering a "Master of Philosophy in Comparative and International Education" in 1998.