Description: While in the early stages of the production of systematized knowledge, both in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, man searched for the universal principles that rule nature, the universe and human life, with the birth of experimental sciences in the Modern Age, mainly from the 18th century onwards with the advent of industrial capitalism, man begins to divide to study and gain knowledge. This Cartesian principle was put forward by the philosopher as a strategy for research in greater depth. However, it turned out to be a way of understanding reality as if it were actually divided into disciplines. This segmented view of scientific knowledge clashes with the needs of today's world, where communication is fast and allows for a quick exchange of information between producers of knowledge, making collaborative work easier, even at a distance. On the other hand, one realizes that the complexities of the problems of the modern world cannot be studied and understood within the limited parameters of a strict division into disciplines. A significant increase in the production of scientific knowledge, promoted by speedier exchange of information, leads to a demand of new paradigms to understand reality. Even public institutions which evaluate researches and post-graduate programs find it difficult to understand the transdisciplinary approach. New universities (like East USP and UFSP) are introducing a new teaching structure based on the study of problems and fields of knowledge, rather than disciplines. At private institutions, short-term, sequential and technological courses are based on interdisciplinary proposals. Methodology: This research was carried out at three higher education institutions in the Sate of São Paulo, in the South-East of Brazil. Two are confessional universities and the third is a private College of Arts. The method used was hypothetical-deductive: from the identification of a gap in scientific knowledge - the possibilities of transdisciplinary research at universities and other higher education institutions - we conducted a theoretical study about transdisciplinary research and put forward proposals and research projects to some higher education institutions. In two of them it was possible to carry out the experiment. With the data we formulated hypotheses about the barriers that hinder the growth and innovation in the practice of research at larger institutions while at the same time we conducted the experiment proposed in the post-graduate programs of the institutions that allowed it.The research methodology used was research-intervention, which consists in observing and acting upon what is observed and, during the observation, integrating the diagnosis, the psychopedagogical intervention and the art-therapy intervention. This research used the technique of direct participant observation for the data that refer to the institutions where the authors act as researchers. Conclusions: The theoretical part was based on three approaches: Edgar Morin's ideas on education, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge and complex thinking; the study of Mathematics, languages, especially artistic language and symbolic thinking, through Semiology and Linguistics; and Learning theories. Transdisciplinarity and complex thinking come into being to deal with the study of complex phenomena. Transdisciplinarity does not invalidate disciplines, rather, by surpassing their boundaries, it aims at bringing about new approaches to produce more encompassing and integrating knowledge. However, it is difficult to break down the barriers of disciplines because each field of knowledge represents a field of power, some with more prestige than others. It is therefore difficult to change this segmented and not very collaborative pattern of production of knowledge which characterizes Brazilian university. Sometimes they have not even reached the previous stage, interdisciplinarity. Notwithstanding, innovation exists in the new courses being created.