This article analyzes the movement of transformation of statistical practices put at the service of education towards the institutionalization of statistics as a scientific discipline, from 1930 to 1960. To do so, the analysis included mainly documents from the archives of Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo. The analysis takes into account the studies by Ivor Goodson regarding the patterns and processes that consolidate an academic heading. The findings of the study point to the actions of professor Milton Rodrigues aimed at turning statistical knowledge as a method of work in education, psychology and sociology into statistics as a research field, with its own methods, objects of investigation and theoretical framework. The actions of the aforementioned professor to establish space for the training of statisticians resulted in a significant displacement and provided several productions involving statistics with a scientific status. At the time, despite being widely utilized, statistics lacked an important aspect for the configuration of an academic discipline: specialized training courses, which make up a disciplinary community.
Educational statistics; Statistics; Scientific pedagogy; Discipline