This article is focused on the theoretical basis of the study of the history of education in Serbia in the period from the foundation of the first Teacher College (1871) to the end of the socialist establishment in the country (1989). By theoretical bases, we mean theoretical and methodological assumptions, including ideological patterns, which influenced the constitution of the history of education as a scientific discipline. The aim of the paper is to analyse and clarify scientific and non-scientific assumptions in the conception of the history of education in Serbia. As a teaching discipline, the history of education has always been placed within the framework of professional education of primary school teachers and education scientists. As a scientific discipline it has gone through different phases, which are presented in this paper: from Christian-oriented support for teacher training, through fitting into current developments in cultural history, to particular propaedeutics of the method of dialectical materialism for all disciplines of the educational science. The history of education in Serbia in the 20th century reached its full development through cooperation with general historians on projects from the national history of education and schooling, as part of the shift of interests from political to social historiography. This orientation of scientific discipline was not accompanied by an increase, but rather a decrease in the role of the history of education in the professional education of teachers in Serbia.