Historical perspective of the educational research: of the “disinterested knowledge” to the studies of social representation

Abstract

From its origin the university was organized with the objective of to cultivate and to transmit the accumulated knowledge for the humanity. Accompanying the changes of the society, the university was if adapting to the social demands, through the integration between teaching and research. Looking for to overcome the limitations noticed in the researches of quantitative character, traditionally accomplished in education, the calls qualitative approaches of research appeared that they began to win force in the decade of 1970. Before the divergences on what characterizes a qualitative methodology and, by means of the apparent contradiction between quantitative research and qualitative research, this work has as objective discusses, in a historical perspective, the paper of the research inside the university, evaluating the different debates around which it stipulated to call educational research. Through bibliographical research - while process of indirect documentation - it took place a survey and selection of the appropriate bibliography and, shortly afterward, a study of the texts in depth, in the way of to understand them, apprehending the authors’ message and making a judgement on the same ones (analytical reading). That way, it is perceived that the qualitative researches, in their different manifestations, seem to have as point in common the fact of they followed an understanding and interpretative tradition. As the researches that use the social representations as study perspective consider that the social phenomenon has to be understood in their determinations and transformations given by the subject, and for they present a great dialectics potential, they deserve prominence among the qualitative approaches of research.