Introduction: The multi-layered transitions of knowledge production and university education in science and mathematics

Abstract

More than ever, our time is characterized by rapid changes in the organization and the production of knowledge. This movement is deeply rooted not only in the evolution of the scientific endeavour, but also and especially in the transformation of the political, economic and cultural organization of society. In other words, the production of scientific knowledge is changing both with regards to the internal development of science and technology, and with regards to the function and role science and technology fulfill in society. Knowledge production has, for some time, stopped being the exclusivity of universities, founded as bastions and guardians of truth and knowledge. This production can now be owned by a variety of institutions and organizations with interests other than the production and maintenance of knowledge for its own sake. This general social context in which universities and knowledge production are placed has been given numerous names: the knowledge society, the informational society, the learning society, the post-industrial society, the risk society, or even the post-modern society (e.g., Castells, 1996, 1997, 1998; Beck, 1992, 1999; Lyotard, 1984). A common feature of different characterizations of this historic period is the fact that we are living the beginning of its construction. Parts of the World, not only of the First World but also of the Developing World, are involved in the transformations associated with it. There is a movement from former social, political and cultural forms of organization which impacts knowledge production, into new, unknown and uncertain forms. Of course such an observation may be true for any point in time. However, the expansion of information technologies has created global flows of knowledge that implicate experts and non-experts in ways that have not been seen before. The accelerated pace of technological development and innovation opens so many options and possible, unexpected and almost uncontrollable courses of action that change, movements and transformations may go in different directions. Our awareness of the complexity of the changes in our time does not allow us to see a clear end. Somehow it seems that the clear-cut utopias that guided the ideas of development and progress in the past are no longer a strong presence, and therefore the transitions in the knowledge society generate a new uncertain world. In this context, it is difficult to avoid considering seriously the challenges that such a complex and uncertain social configuration poses to scientific knowledge, to universities and especially to education in the natural sciences and mathematics. It is clear that the transformation of knowledge outside universities has implied a change in the routes that research in the natural sciences and mathematics has taken in the last decades. It is also clear that in different parts of the world these changes have happened at different points in time. While universities in the "New World" (the American Continent, Africa, Asia and Oceania) have accommodated their operation to the challenges of the consolidation of the New World and, thereby, have had a more utilitarian concern, many European universities with a longer existence and tradition have moved more slowly into this time of transformation and have been responding at a slower pace to environmental challenges. The process of tuning universities, together with their forms of knowledge production and their provision of education in science and mathematics, with the demands of the knowledge society has been as complex as the general transformation that society is undergoing. Therefore an understanding of the current transitions in science and mathematics education has to consider different dimensions involved in such a change. We find ourselves, and our universities, to be in a transitional period. In our choice of the term transition, we want to signal the idea that universities and their knowledge production and educational activities are undergoing a particular type of change. We did not want to adopt the term "reform", since we do not want to convey the idea that changes intend clear improvement of the resulting state in relation to the initial state before the implementation of a change. We observe that current changes are happening at a variety of levels, from curricular plans, to administrative levels, and even at international regulations and harmonisations. It is clear that we are leaving "old" practices behind and are entering an era of "new" practices; however, the multiplicity of transformations blur the horizon of when changes will stop and where they will lead to. Traditionally, educational studies in mathematics and science education have looked at changes in education from within the scientific disciplines and in the closed context of the classroom. Although educational change in the end is implemented in everyday teaching and learning situations, other parallel dimensions influencing these situations cannot be forgotten. The understanding is that the actual potentialities and limitations of educational transformations are highly dependent on the network of educational, cultural, administrative and ideological views and practices that permeate and constitute science and mathematics education in universities today. © 2009 Springer US.