International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
modules: pedagogical-psychological, module of special didactics, educational practice and module in field
specialization.
Increasing teacher competences
Up-to-date requirements for the educational content which formulate the expert in his field: the educational
content shall be in accordance with the demands of the labour market; modern module programmes shall be
introduced; people shall be boosted to self-plan their lifelong learning and their career progress;
The courses for students are aimed at introducing extra skills for the future in relation to the specialties they
have chosen. Students have to develop new competencies and skills needed for their future profession and
therefor the theme of competences in education is very often used in educational theory and also in the practice.
There are many various discussions about key competencies in education and teacher professional competencies.
Although a focus on key competences can be seen in the 2007 LLL strategy, a new LLL strategy adopted in
2011 highlighted their importance again with the criticism that the earlier strategy covered this issue “only at
low level” and did not develop “the method of their acquisition”. The Action plan to the 2011 LLL strategy
indicated in its Measure 4.2 creating a multimedia platform in support of autonomous improvement of key
competences by means of learning opportunities provided by this platform. The following key competences are
explicitly stressed: communication in foreign languages,
digital competence, social and civic competences and entrepreneurship. (CEDEFOP, 2012, p. 34) As seen
from the strategy, we can highlight the entrepreneurship among the competences needed to develop in
educational systems with regard to our project. To achieve quality education is needed also focus on teacher
development.
Authors Cort, Härkönen, Volmari (2004) point to some of the skills and knowledge teachers need to acquire
and teacher training to provide. These include:
• new pedagogical skills in line with the learner centered approach of modern pedagogical theory
(‘pedagogical update’) and on-the-job learning techniques now being offered to trainees;
• up-to-date ‘vocational’ skills related to modern technologies and work practices (‘vocational update’);
• awareness of the needs of business and employers;
• skills for team working and networking;
• managerial, organisational and communications skills.
Pedagogical and vocational skills; pedagogical and vocational update
Teachers and trainers in VET require two distinct sets of skills. They need pedagogical skills: ability to
analyse and identify student needs, ability to design training programmes to meet these needs, ability to teach
and ability to assess the educational and professional outcome of this teaching. These are generic skills needed
by all teachers regardless of the discipline in which they work.
VET teachers also need vocational skills and knowledge. They need to understand and
perform the tasks trainees will be asked to perform when they leave school and begin work – and also have a
firm grounding in the theory underlying these skills.
In the past, VET teachers acquired their pedagogical and vocational skills at the beginning of their careers.
Today this is no longer possible. National VET systems are in continuous change. Educational theory suggests
innovative teaching methods, some involving the use of technology. And the workplace is changing faster still,
both in terms both of technology and working practices.
In this new situation, it is essential that teachers should continuously update their pedagogical and vocational
skills. In what follows we will refer to these processes as pedagogical update and vocational update. (Cort P.,
Härkönen A., Volmari K., 2004, p. 10)
New target groups: VET teachers today have to deal with more diverse target groups than ever before. One of
the effects of lifelong learning is an increasing number of adults entering VET programs. A critical challenge for
VET is to find ways of teaching adults which take proper account of their previous professional and life
experience, their variable skills and their attitudes, which may be very different to those of younger people. In
some cases it may be necessary to deal with significant resistance to learning. Changing paradigms in
educational theory: recent years have seen rapid changes in educational theory which now focuses on learning
rather than techniques for ‘transmitting’ information by teachers. The teacher’s role becomes that of a ‘coach’ or
‘facilitator’. This calls upon teachers to plan and differentiate their teaching to take account of students’ different
learning styles. Optimal teaching requires teachers to apply a broad range of teaching methods, including project
169