Communities of Practice: Their role to the professional development of educators and to school improvement. Attitudes of Secondary School Teachers

Contemporary society of knowledge is featured by compound structures, strong diversity as well as inevitable complexity. As aresult, the educational community functions within a frame of multidimensional changes where the new quality educational ideal requires professionalism and improved practices, which issue through experiential learning, continuous research and training seminars based on the development of a "culture of professional learning" within the educational organisation (Elmore, 2002, Bransford et al., 2000). The present study investigates the attitudes of Greek teachers of Secondary Education regarding the contribution of communities of practice to the professional empowerment of educators along with the improvement of the school unity. There is a conceptual analysis and presentation of the basic characteristics of a community of practice and its connection to the school frame. The tool of the research is the semi-structured interview while the main findings as well as the interpretation of the results highlight the significance of the existence of the communities of practice in the "new" school.