Practice Communities of Public Elementary School Teachers: A Colombian Case Study

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an investigation carried out at a Colombian public school in Sincelejo (Sucre, Colombia), with the purpose of learning about the school’s aspects that favor and affect the formation and functioning of practice communities of elementary school teachers. A case study was conducted with a qualitative approach that used the following as data collection techniques: participant observation, document review, and qualitative interview. It is concluded that at the school there are only formal practice communities identified with the characteristics that Hargreaves associates with contrived collegiality: regulated administratively, mandatory, implementation-oriented, fixed in time and space, and predictable.