Abstract:

This research report focuses on the professional development of teachers and highlights teacher’ agency as a fundamental axis in educational processes (Rigo et al., 2024). The study addresses the increasing gap that segregates rural education in Colombia (OECD, 2025) and proposes a critical approach to understand the challenges related to access, retention, and quality of educational processes (Guzmán Rincón et al., 2023; Burbano Mora, 2020). The limitations on teacher stability and tenure in rural areas of the country, along with the specific characteristics of rural education such as age-diverse classrooms, bring challenges for teacher education and professional development.

The theoretical approach aims at considering the professional development of rural teachers to understand teacher's emancipatory praxis, a perspective from which the development of teacher’ agency is at the core of educational transformation (Andrade, 2025). Teachers’ professional development and agency are situated practices within a space of power, conflict, and antagonism (Mouffe, 2025) in which the status of governance interacts with the teacher's agency, naturally causing tension over the allocation of values experienced by all actors involved (Mead, 2013).

This qualitative study, with a critical approach, recognizes rural teachers as educational agents who, within a space of power and tension, embody situated knowledge. Through a multi-sited case study design with an ethnographic approach, the situated knowledge of 12 Escuelas Normales Superiores (ENS) in Colombia is analyzed. It is important to mention that in Colombia, the ENS have historically led the education of rural teachers. The participating population consisted of 75 teacher trainers from the Complementary Training Program (PFC), as the teacher education program in the ENS is called. Through a thematic analysis that cross-referenced data collected in focus groups and institutional documents, the categories established in the research questions were identified: characteristics, achievements, and challenges of teacher training and professional development.

The findings reflect the three categories of analysis and thematic axes of the research from the perspective of the participating teacher training institutions (ENS). In general, the characteristics confirm an ecosystemic relationship between rural educational practices and the communities in which they are developed, a characteristic that allows us to glimpse a pedagogical practice rooted in rural cultural identity. Regarding achievements, the institutional accreditation processes successfully completed by the ENS are highlighted, resulting in the retention of trained teachers in the rural areas they serve. Finally, the challenges are governmental in nature and reveal critical aspects such as the concept of educational quality and the rigid and standardized structure of teacher training in the country.

Keywords:

Teacher, professional development, rural education.