This article discusses the positions of authors in relationship to the production of knowledge and its dissemination in contexts characterized as moderns or post-moderns, leading to think about knowledge and educational research. In order to do so, it will demonstrate that the use of terms such as post-modernity or post-modern do not find any consensus among those who are concerned with the understanding the various manifestations of contemporary historical moment. The position here adopted asserts that this is a transitional period, not yet freed from modernity, not yet fully integrated into another era. It is discussed, then, the perplexities both in the thinking and in the educational research in face of historically constructed complex social movements, debating what to preserve in education, what to avoid, which values, practices and identities are, in principle, good enough to be preserved and the reasons for doing so, among other similar questions. Also, it is shown that the form through which problems are placed and analysed is changing. In a transitional period, where things are constructed and deconstructed, normalized and transgressed, but always dialectically interweaved, considerable challenges face educational research so to understand the structure of the relations in teaching and learning, as well as the contextual heterogeneity where these relations are woven.
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH; POST-MODERNITY; VALUES; CURRICULUM