The University Institute of Education Sciences (IUCE) at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) was preceded by Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación (ICE), the Institute of Education Sciences.
The UAM Institute of Education Sciences was established in accordance with Decree 1678/1969, of 24 July 1969, on the creation of the Institutes of Education Sciences, under the education reform process that ended up with the passing of the General Education Act 14/1970.
In the aforementioned decree on the creation of the ICEs in the Spanish universities, special attention is paid to teacher training, thus entitling the ICEs as providers of both postgraduate initial teacher training programmes and Continual professional development courses. Such teacher training had to be offered in the academic context of the universities that, according to the rules and regulations of the time, were considered the governing and core centres of education. The decree states that the ICEs shall be responsible for providing pedagogical training, education research, and consultancy in every educational respect.
In the domain of teacher training, the ICEs shall be particularly entrusted with designing and delivering postgraduate initial teacher training programmes in Secondary Education. The ICEs shall provide Courses awarding the “Certificado de Aptitud Pedagógica” (CAP), the Pedagogical Aptitude Certificate, that are programmes awarding a postgraduate certificate in Secondary Education. This is a requirement for postgraduate students to become subject-specialist teachers in secondary settings, and enables such students to get the status of qualified teacher and to sit competitive exams to become a civil-servant teacher in public schools.
Education research is another major instructional scaffolding of the Institutes of Education Sciences. The Decree forwards the creation of Centro Nacional de Investigación Pedagógica, the National Centre for Pedagogical Research, that shall serve the purpose of coordinating efforts in the research activity, and of disseminating and expanding research outputs. Based on research outcomes, the evidence-informed approach to teacher education and practice is envisaged as a stimulus for pedagogical updating. ICEs are proposed a research portfolio with strands of research that embrace research areas across all phases and settings of the Education System.
Consultancy in educational issues is the ICEs’ third mission, whose practice is evidence-informed by the educational research that is undertaken by the ICEs themselves.
The educational regulations governing the creation of the ICEs were significantly ammended in the three decades subsequent to their establishment. As a consequence, the UAM ICE needed to be adapted to the newly-enacted legislation. Thus, on 19 January 2001, the Governing Board of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid sanctioned the transition of ICE into Instituto Universitario de Ciencias de la education (IUCE), the UAM University Institute of Education Sciences.