Facing the problem of unbalanced development of knowledge across sectors and fields: the case of the knowledge base in primary education

Abstract

This paper aims at developing a framework to analyse the structure and the dynamics of the knowledge base in the education sector. The main purpose is to explain why the creation and circulation of knowledge do not work well and what kind of transformations should be implemented at the system level to improve the process of knowledge advances. Three main issues are at stake: the interface between science (in this case, the educational research) and technology (the practical knowledge used by teachers), the low level of codification, which hampers the access to and the expansion of the professional knowledge base and the incentive problems posed by the need for knowledge and innovation diffusion across classrooms and schools.