Schools face complex challenges and demands in current challenging times. Therefore, education gains new meanings and reinforces the strategic value of schools in achieving quality education. Any changes or improvements that are ambitious and complex, at the educational level, necessarily imply teachers’ involvement. Without their commitment, educational reforms will not produce the desired changes in educational practices. As Zeichner (1993) claims, in order to significantly change education, it is essential that teachers change their practices, as they continue to be dominantly traditional in many situations, in which teachers play a more technical role.

Change is, however, difficult to operate since, although it relates primarily to the involvement and abilities of teachers, it does not depend exclusively on them. Educational policies and the result of processes in which teachers' voices have been absent, assign to them a passive role, and very little intervention in their field of action, due to the lack of autonomy, leaving them with the application of practices designed by other stakeholders (Kelchtermans, 2009).

On the other hand, teacher education, mainly INSET, is sometimes decontextualized and disconnected from teachers’ needs without an impact on their practices. It is not possible to foster "quality education, neither educational reform nor pedagogical innovation, without an adequate teacher education" (Nóvoa, 1992: 9).

Thus, Veiga Simão, Flores, Morgado, Forte & Almeida (2009) refer that change that is currently underway in higher education institutions, in the field of teacher education, will only produce the desired effects if, at the school level, continuing education is to be organized in a more contextualized way rooted in the "identification of needs and problems, to design training projects and (re) define pedagogical lines of action" (Veiga Simão et al, 2009: 64).

According to Veiga Simão et al. (2009), there is an urgent need to create teamwork methods, requiring that teachers develop a more autonomous attitude, as well as the construction of a new teaching culture.

In establishing collaborative working contexts, the school plays a central role, with the responsibility of involving the educational agents, namely the teachers, actively involving them in strategies and processes capable of carrying out changes in their practices and in relation to their professional culture. Therefore, it is necessary that the school creates mechanisms that allow the transformation of its cultures, against the individualistic way of operating and developing a more collaborative culture. However, "Collaboration is an automatically attractive concept" (Fullan & Hargreaves, 2001: 95). The authors, drawing on the results of Rosenholtz's (1989) studies, on school cultures, conclude that in schools where teachers normally worked alone and rarely asked for help, their students had lower levels of success than students in schools where their teachers worked together.

Fullan, M. & Hargreaves, A. (2001). Por que é que vale a pena lutar? O trabalho de equipa na escola. Porto: Porto Editora. Kelchtermans, G. (2009). O comprometimento profissional para além do contrato: Autocompreensão, vulnerabilidade e reflexão dos professores. In: (orgs.) M. Assunção Flores & A. M. Veiga Simão. Aprendizagem e desenvolvimento profissional de Professores: Contextos e Perspetivas. Mangualde: Edições Pedago, pp. 61-98. . Nóvoa, A. (1992). Formação de professores e profissão docente. In A. Nóvoa (coord.), Os professores e a sua formação. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, pp. 13-33. Rosenholtz, S. (1989). Teachers’ Workplace: The Social Organization of Schools. New York: Longman. Veiga Simão, A. M., Flores, M. A., Morgado, J. C., Forte, A. M. & Almeida, T. F. (2009). Formação de Professores em contextos colaborativos. Um projeto de investigação em curso. Sísifo. Revista de Ciências da Educação, 8, pp. 61-74. Consultado em dezembro de 2009 em http://sisifo.fpce.ul.pt Zeichner, K. (1993). A formação reflexiva de professores: ideias e práticas. Lisboa: Educa.