The current socioeconomic reality demands that nations rethink education stating the need to rethink educational organization and curriculum development, aiming to respond to the premises of education for all (Delors et al, 1996).

Many challenges inhabit the educational field demanding that educational actors update their practices and approaches to teaching and learning, transforming and making them more adequate to societies’ demands (Bolivar, 2007). This requires, from schools and mostly teachers, an effort to adapt their work modes and take into account all features associated with students and context. This is in line with an emerging concept in educational discourses that seems able to respond to those demands: contextualization. This concept concerns the processes by which teachers adapt and reorganize curricular contents aiming to provide an adequate education for all students, in an effort to promote an effective “education for all”, whatever their social, economical and cultural background is.

It is believed that contextualization is a promising process in developing and adapting curricula to meet students and context, without neglecting curricula main features and characteristics but turning them into something understandable (Gillespie, 2002; Yamauchi, 2003; King, Bellocchi and Ritchie, 2007; and Kalchik and Oertle, 2010). Following this thesis, if teachers were able to adopt this methodology, they would more likely be able to answer to the current society’s demands towards education.

However, this can be a hard and difficult task, and we believe that teachers’ initial education and specially, their lifelong learning play an important role in preparing and qualify teachers to deal with these demands.

In fact, literature states that contextualization should be part of teachers education, whether initial or continuous (Ebersole e Worster, 2007; Thanh, Dekke e Goedhart, 2008; Brock et al, 2006; Schereens, 2010). Some authors even affirm that this is a lacking feature on teachers’ initial education that needs to be added to teachers’ education curriculum «it is therefore imperative to equip the student teachers with a variety of tools, enabling them to identify the learners’ difficulties… Moreover, the students must be made aware of the importance of constantly paying attention to what the pupils… teachers should try various ways of exploring how pupils are thinking about the concept being taught» (Penso, 2002:35). Also, Schultz, Jones-Walker and Chikkatur (2008:184) state that the «role as teacher educators is to prepare new teachers to take on these challenges and to introduce them to formal and informal support systems to sustain them as they negotiate their teaching decisions during these first years of teaching… in order to find ways to reconcile them into a coherent and defensible set of practices to provide students with the best education possible».

Hence, through a research project focusing contextualization, our aim was to understand how teachers’ lifelong education enables them to be more complete and capable of using contextualization to improve teaching and learning and respond to society’s needs and demands.

Also, our goal was to find if schools follow this educational philosophy and if that affects the kind of lifelong education that teachers seek as individuals and professionals.

BARDIN, L. (1991). A análise de Conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70. BOLÍVAR, A. (2007). “ Um olhar actual sobre a mudança educativa: onde situar os esforços de melhoria?”, in LOPES, A. e LEITE, C.(org.). Currículo, Escola e Formação de Identidades. Porto: Edições Asa, pp.15-50. BROCK, C., et al (2006). Negotiating Displacement Spaces: Exploring Teachers’ Stories About Learning and Diversity. Curriculum Inquiry, 36 (1), 35-62. DELORS, J. (coord.) et al (1996). Educação um tesouro a descobrir. UNESCO: Edições ASA. EBERSOLE, M. & WORSTER, A. (2007). Sense of Place in Teacher Preparation Courses: Place-Based and Standards-Based Education. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 73 (2), 19-24. GILLESPIE, M. (2002). EFF Research Principle: A Contextualized Approach to Curriculum and Instruction. EFF Research to Practice Note 3, 2-8. Retrieved from http://www.edpubs.gov/document/ed001934w.pdf KALCHICK, S. & OERTLE, K. (2010). The Theory and Application of Contextualized Teaching and Learning in Relation to Programmes of Study and Career Pathways. Transition Highlights, 2, 1-6. KING, D., BELLOCHI A, & Ritchie, S. (2007). Making Connections: Learning and Teaching Chemistry in Context. Research in Science Education, 38 (3), 365-384. L’ÉCUYER, R. (1990). Méthodologie de l’analyse développementale de contenu – méthode GPS et concept de soi. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. PENSO, S. (2002). Pedagogical Content Knowledge: how do student teachers identify and describe. Asia–Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 30 (1), 25-37 SCHULTZ, K., JONES-WALKER, C. & CHICKKATUR, A. (2008). Listening to Students, Negotiating Beliefs: Preparing Teachers for Urban Classrooms. Curriculum Inquiry, 38 (2), 156-187. SCHEREENS, Jaap (org) (2010). An analysis of teachers’ professional development based on the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey(TALIS). Brussels: OEDC. THANH, T., DEKKE, R. & GOEDHART, M. (2008). Preparing Vietnamese student teachers for teaching with a student-centered approach. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 11 (1), 61-81. YAMAUCHI, L. (2003). Making School Relevant for At-Risk Students: The Wai‘anae High School Hawaiian Studies Program. Journal of Education for Students Placed At-risk, 8 (4), 379-390