Epistemic Communities to Consolidate Educational Policies in the Internal Planning of Teacher Training College

Abstract

An Epistemic Community, as defined by Adler and Haas (1992), is a network of professionals with wide academic recognition as experts in a particular field of knowledge, whose legitimacy allows them to influence the formulation and execution of policies in that field. There are several fields of knowledge in which the influence of Epistemic Communities has been successful (International Relations, Medicine, Environmental Care, among others), but as appears in the available studies, there has been little formation of these communities in the Educational field. In the case of the Teacher Training Colleges of Mexico, this experience also seems to be null, but if we analyze the foundations and implications of the Epistemic Communities, the formation and implementation of this type of communities can be a real opportunity to overcome problems of legitimacy and concretion of the Federal Educational Policies that for these colleges have been formulated in our country in the most recent years. The first tasks that these communities would be the understanding and discussion of the problems of these type of colleges to enunciate alternative solutions, as well as the creation of an analytical framework for the interpretation of International, National and State Educational Policies so that, in their internal work, the Teacher Training Colleges can enunciate congruently their own institutional policies and in the short or medium term can actually put into practice these policies in aspects such as Research, Educational Innovation, Professionalization of their teachers, and the effective Use of Technologies (from ICT-Information and Communication Technologies to PET- Participation and Empowerment Technologies).Keywords: Epistemic Communities, Educational Policies, Teacher Training Colleges and Institutions.