In China, ancient thinkers such as Kong Qiu, Mo Zhai, Monk and Xun Kuang. They all discussed education from their respective perspectives of philosophy, politics, morality, humanity and epistemology. In Europe, ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. I also discussed education from my own philosophical point of view. However, in a long historical period, pedagogy has not yet formed an independent discipline. Some scholars believe that it was not until the 7th century A.D./KLOC-0 that the book "Great Teaching Theory (1632)" written by Czech educator J.A. Comenius marked the differentiation of pedagogy from philosophy and became an independent discipline. However, most of the earliest lectures on pedagogy were given by philosophers. For example, the German philosopher Kant once gave a lecture on education at the University of Konigsberg in Germany in 1776. With the continuous development of educational science, pedagogy and philosophy are combined to form the discipline of educational philosophy.

1848, The System of Pedagogy written by German philosopher J.K.F. Rosencrantz was published, and was later translated into English by American A.C. Brackett, which was called Philosophy of Education. It is generally believed that this is the origin of the word educational philosophy. Later, many philosophers and educators compiled Philosophy of Education, the most influential of which was Democracy and Education by American educator J Dewey (19 16), and the subtitle of this book was Introduction to Philosophy of Education.

At the beginning of the 20th century, experimental pedagogy, which advocated scientific experimental methods to study educational problems, came into being. Since then, there has been a debate between educational science and educational philosophy in educational theory. Representatives of experimental pedagogy emphasize that their experimental research is scientific, but regard educational philosophy as subjective and there is no accurate method. However, the concept of education is still developing. Because the development of educational experimental science cannot fully explain all the problems in educational theory, such as the essence, purpose and value of education, it still needs educational philosophy to answer. In addition, due to the development of modern production, science and technology and the intensification of capitalist contradictions, there are also different opinions and debates on how to reform education. Some philosophers, educators, psychologists and sociologists in the modern west put forward their own different educational views from different philosophical viewpoints, and formed various schools of educational philosophy, which is the reason for the extensive development of contemporary educational philosophy.