This paper aims to present a collaborative action-research which we are developing in the realm of a PhD project about The Ethic of Responsibility in Citizenship Education. This study is taking place in an Integrated School of the Azores Archipelago, through the active involvement of elementary school teachers of all areas of learning. Considering the needs of this particular educational context, the working out process aims at promoting: - the conceptualization and the re-conceptualization in the domain of Ethics and of Citizenship Education; - the learning to learn of teachers, based in a dynamic of research, in which these professionals critically think their educational practices over and diagnose the main problems and needs; - the innovation of the teaching guides centred in chained intervention plans, meaningful and integrated, and where citizenship becomes an effective experience and a transversal area of the curriculum. Throughout this paper we will discuss the data gathered in this process, analysing and reflecting upon the way the objectives were achieved, and presenting the conceptual information that was being built during the whole process.

This collaborative action-research is organised in five stages. In each one of these stages were used several sources and instruments of data research which allowed us to acknowledge the school, the teachers, their teaching practices in terms of citizenship education, and to create a plan of contextualized formation in this domain. The major sources were the documental analysis of the Educational School Projects, the Class Curricular Projects and the School’s Regiment. The instruments and procedures used in the data assembling were: attendance records in class meetings, interviews to class directors, questionnaires to teachers, development, monitoring and evaluation of the teacher guidance workshop.

This study, although still in progress, allows us to understand how the teachers conceive and develop their citizenship practices in the teaching-learning processes, their main obstacles and their interests and developmental needs in this domain. Besides this, it also enables the analysis of the impact and the importance of the collaborative action-research towards educational practices’ innovation and the promotion of the learning to learn and the learning to teach.