José Gimeno Sacristán has been a professor on the areas of Didactics and Academic Organization in the Faculty of Philosophy and Education Science of the Universitat de València. He joined the Universitat in 1981, from the University of Salamanca. Gimeno was the younger professor in the knowledge area and, until his early retirement, the oldest.

He has several publications and the most important ones are the 23 books that he wrote, which had a great influence in the renovation of pedagogy in Spain and Latin America.  Indeed, one of these publications supposed a radical change in pedagogy’s history: ‘'La pedagogía por objetivos, obsesión por la eficiencia'. It is a text that supposed a turning point for the renovation of pedagogy in Spain in the democracy.

Gimeno has been a speaker in numerous conferences, with a recognised prestige in Spain and America, and he also brought the name of the Universitat de València o many places.

He has been awarded with a lot prizes, among them, he won twice the National Prize of Educational Research, as well as the National Research Prize and several ‘honoris causa’ titles by different universities.

When he collected the medal of the University of Chile, he affirmed: ‘Chile is where my heart is, to me it is a special place because I have lived there the Chilean traumas, which are parallel to the Spanish society traumas due to identical conditions and reasons: a state that invalidates freedom and leaves the university at an ambiguous place to lose your life and employment.