Definition of fine art teacher's artistic competence

The article analyzes and presents the concept of educating future fine art teachers' artistic competence and discusses its main components. Intensive rapidity of the development of science and various technologies invites educators of art to search for alternatives paying greater attention to aesthetic literacy and artistic education of the society. The newly-designed General Programmesfor Primary and Basic Education (2008) emphasize the relationship of artistic education with other subjects, search for integration moments, which by its artistic proceeding would enrich pupils' knowledge and help to master it more easily. Pupils would consider art as a world of unexpected creative expressions, a world opening new meanings to them. Since the main purposes ol artistic education are to help children acquire basic artistic, aesthetic and cultural competences, allow them to reveal their creativity in the sphere of art, get them actively involved through art into social activity, communication and learning, it is aimed to create an attractive and favorable emotional social medium for all pupils ofvarious learning styles with regard to artistic education, which should be integrated into other spheres of education. Educating such creativity of a pupil calls for a fine art teacher, who would acquire the highest level of artistic competence. The issues concerning this kind of artistic competence of a fine art teacher, its content and main components have not been broadly discussed or examined. They are also marked by the dilemma arising in the sphere of theorizing art educology: what is more important in the art teacher's job - the artist's or educator's mastery. The article solves the problem based on V Matonis' (2003) idea that the best fine art teacher is the one who is able to combine both spheres of the difficult pedagogical workVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij