In Europe, teachers’ work is being challenged and widened, both by the European Union education and training policies and by the knowledge and learning society. The Bologna Process reshaped teachers’ education both by promoting an initial common path for all educators (not only teachers), recognizing the diversity of education professionals and the need of a core set of common competences and knowledge. Further, it introduces the possibility for different students, with different backgrounds and professional expectations accessing initial training programs. Lifelong Learning policies promote the emergence of different education and training projects in diversified contexts. Nowadays we can have traditional schooling as well as recognition of prior learning or virtual learning; we find teachers working as educators in museums, libraries and hospitals, and we find social workers, animators, artists and psychologists working with teachers in schools and developing educational work elsewhere.

Nóvoa (2002) identified three major dilemmas faced by contemporary teachers: the dilemma of community, of autonomy and knowledge. These regard the extension of education contexts and practices that must be considered by teachers; the increasing necessity of professionals’ decision-making in the development of their work; and the complex characteristics of contemporary knowledge.

The nature of knowledge and experience emerging from contemporary educational phenomena demands the promotion of multidimensional, complex and systemic perspectives allowing sharing different understandings of the educational work, promoting the interchange of practices, defining common strategies and forms of cooperation between institutions, diversifying methods and approaches and promoting the emergence of new knowledge. Osberg et al. (2008) propose an epistemology of emergence: knowledge emerges from our transactions with the world in an unending transactional process and is understood as a response which brings forth new worlds. So, we need tools to renegotiate our world.

In this paper, we argue about the need to rethink in-service training of teachers and other education professionals, by adding epistemological and organizational approaches consistent with the changing reality above mentioned.

·          Can in-service training be grounded on a epistemology of emergence

(Osberg, Biesta & Cillers, 2008)?

·         How can in-service training programs work with (and not against or above) the rising diversity of initial training, practices and professionals approaches?

·         What are the characteristics and potentialities of multi-professional in service training?

Contrasting with the traditional programs of in-service training directed to specialization (concerning both contents and target audience) and emphasising the convergence of approaches and practices, we propose an innovative training strategy: a common platform for professional learning of different education professionals. It is specifically about the possibility to construct shared knowledge in the context of in-service training with heterogeneous groups (concerning professions, institutions, academic background, etc).

We argue about the need of training programs aiming to promote an approach to educational work, based on trans-disciplinarity and interdiscursivity (Gonçalves, 2009, p.15). Our proposal seeks to explore both convergence and divergence of educational thought and practice, thereby promoting plurality among educational practices grounded in contemporary theories, rationalities and needs – and inhibiting the pervasive hegemony of the traditional schools model of teaching and learning.

Alves, M. G., Neves, C., & Gomes, E. X. (2010). Lifelong Learning: conceptualizations in European educational policy documents. European Educational Research Journal , 9 (3), 332-344. Gomes, E. X. (2009). Children's educational processes in contemporary cities: preliminary findings and insights from a case study developed in Lisbon. European Educational Research Journal , 8 (2), 311-325. Gonçalves, T. (2009). Complex systems and plastic brains. A trans-disciplinary approach to education and the cognitive sciences. In M.Karanika-Murray & R.Wiesemes (eds), Exploring avenues to interdisciplinary research. From cross- to multi- to interdisciplinarity (pp.9-24). Nottingham: Nottingham University Press. Nóvoa, A. (2002). O espaço público da educação: imagens, narrativas, dilemas. In AAVV, Espaços de educação tempos de formação. Textos da Conferência Internacional (pp. 237-263). Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Osberg, D.C., Biesta, G.J.J. & Cilliers, P. (2008). From representation to emergence: Complexity’s challenge to the epistemology of schooling. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40(1): 213-227.