Scientific culture in the educational system of the department of Guajira, Colombia

The investigation had the purpose of investigating the evolution of scientific culture at the interior of the public and private educational institutions in the Departamento de la Guajira, Colombia; for that purpose a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 192 students belonging to last grade of basic secondary of several educational institutions that were selected by their importance. The investigation was of descriptive type, not experimental and transectional. The technique used was the questionnaire with multiple choice answers with five alternatives in a Lickert type scale. The extracted data were organized, tabulated and analyzed using basic statistical techniques. The obtained results show that a good level of scientific culture exists in the educational institutions, there are strengths for the use of scientific processes, in the application of the scientific concepts and in the handling of the topics of scientific character; however, a weakness is evidenced in such aspects as communication of results and the choosing of research topics. It is important to mention that it is not clear the concept students have about the contextual dimension of scientific culture. For this reason, an appropriate methodology is proposed, so that the students can choose the topic of investigation; the design of investigation lines on the part of the institutions to strengthen the knowledge in students so they understand the role their research play in the design of public policies, and finally, it is necessary to know or to design a program of incentives for investigating youths.