Nowadays, a lot of the traditional science conceptions promote a socially accepted stereotype that puts knowledge far away from the educational agents. (Gil Pérez, 2005) Its presents a neutral, confused, a non historical science that tends to reproduce contents; forgets the context implications and the users’ interpretation. A lot of scientific communities foster the individual and elitist research. They ignore the collaboration and academic exchange. It does not reinforce accessible knowledge. According to Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Scott, & Trow, (1997) this mode (1) of producing knowledge has a poor incidence in the social and education development and a lacks in using the findings.  

In the other hand, one can see various proposals to make the knowledge accessible to all. This can be easily found in the Internet where diverse sites have achieved different levels of knowledge accessibility. This mode (2) has proved that it diminishes the gap between education agents and educational knowledge. Some of them are: National Foundation for Educational Research (www.nfer.ac.uk), The Higher Education Academy (www.heacademy.ac.uk), www.heacademy.ac.uk/EvidenceNet and Educational Week (www.edweek.org) and in the University of Indiana (http://trip.iupui.edu/)

With these bases, the main question in this project is: How the educational knowledge is produced at the different educational Institutions in Jalisco in order to build a Scientific Culture?

The objectives are:

1.       To identify what is the particular mode in which the faculty in those institutions produces knowledge, what kind of educational knowledge is produced and how.

2.       To describe the diverse activities/strategies that effectively produces educational knowledge, and as a consequence of those activities/strategies, identifies the evidence of a scientific culture.

3.       With these findings, establish the general strategies to achieve the goal of lessening the gap between educational agents, researchers, and their outcomes in Mexico (Jalisco).

The main concern of the Knowledge Society is the usefulness and the relevance of rigorous knowledge generation. The adjustment of the scientist practice to these new requirements results in an emerging paradigm. In this emerging paradigm the investigators´ theoretical interpretations respond to the immediate social, historical, ideological and cultural context. Furthermore, the findings display a clear understanding of the time and space limits. The assumption in this paradigm is that the knowledge is an accessible and democratic social good, in the pursuit of a scientific culture -´science for all´. In this sense, there is a specific effort of several investigators in the educational area. They are building a theoretical foundation in education, an educational science (Sañudo, 2006). Some of the main proposals are from United Kingdom (Carr, 1996; Kemmis, 1996) and Spain (Gimeno Sacristán, 2002; Pérez Gómez, 1998). They all have a similar comprehension of educational events and they share that the functional object in education is practice. Carr (2003) states that what distinguishes educational research are its ´usefulness´ and ´relevant´ knowledge. In fact, “educational research is grounded, epistemologically, in the moral foundations of educational practice. It is the epistemologically and moral purposes underlying the ´usefulness´ and ´relevance´ of educational research that matter.” (Sikes, Nixon & Carr, 2003: 2).

Carr, W. (1996). Hacia una teoría crítica de la Educación. Barcelona: Morata. [Carr, W (1995) For Education: Towards Critical Educational Inquiry, Open University Press. Educational Resources Information Center, www.eric.ed.gov. Carr, W. (2003). Educational research and its histories, in Sikes, Nixon and Carr (2003) (Eds.) The moral foundations of educational research: Knowledge, inquiry and values, England, McGraw-Hill Education / Open University Press, pp. 6-17. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. y Trow, M. (1997). La nueva producción del conocimiento. España: Pomares. [Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. & Trow, T. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, London: Sage] Gil Pérez, et al (2005). ¿Cómo promover el interés por la cultura científica? UNESCO Oficina Regional de Educación para América Latina y el Caribe OREALC/UNESCO. Santiago. Gimeno, S. (2002) Educar y convivir en la cultura global, Madrid: Morata, pp. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2003). ‘Mode 2’ Revisited: The New Production of Knowledge. Introduction. Minerva 41: 179–194, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Pérez Gómez, Ángel (1998) La cultura escolar en la sociedad neoliberal, Madrid, Morata. Sañudo, L. (2006) Significación de la práctica como sistema complejo en Significación de la práctica educativa de Perales (Coord.) México: Paidós, pp. 17-51 Sikes, P., Nixon, J., & Carr, W. (2003). The Moral Foundations of Educational Research: Knowledge, Inquiry and Values. Philadelphia: Open Press University, pp. 141.