Professional competence in teacher education

In this paper the writer is concerned with teacher competencies as bases for teacher education.Teaching a profession requires members to undergo a specialized training in order to acquire theoretical knowledge and teaching procedures necessary to the performance of professional tasks. One problem with teacher training programs is that there is a high level of disagreement concerned with the theoretical knowledge and the teaching skills to be included in the teacher education curriculum. In part, the problem is due to the fact that the teaching; profession has not been well defined, mainly in relation to the role of the teacher in the classroom. As a result, the teacher preparationprograms have been based on judgments of a variety of groups and usually requires the completion of a series- of courses. For a long time, teacher r preparation was based upon the theoretical component and a period of student teaching. It was believed that, with an appropriate frame of theoretical references and so .e supervise practice, the prospective teacher would be able to function as a member of tile teaching profession.With the advance of technology, society has been undergoing drastic changes. The demands upon the school are becoming more and morn complex, meanwhile schools are not prepared to cope with the exigencies of world changes. Among other problems, schools are not fulfilling the exigencies of changing society. The situation is a vicious circle where the preparation of teachers is an inadequate one and thus the teachers' work with the youngsters also fails.In the past ten years, teacher education has been a constant target for improvement. Several teacher education innovations have appeared in attempts to raise the standards of teacher education, but still teacher education has far to go.One of the major problems to be considered in teaching education is concerned with a definition of teacher competence: ''hat is teacher competence? 74T.ich criteria can be used to define teacher competence? A definition of teacher competence is imperative to the improvement of teacher education. Effectiveness in teacher education programs may be improved through the use of competency bases.During past years, teacher competence has been a subject of several studies. Definitions of teacher competence have been altering from descriptions of personal qualities, where it had been for a long time, to a more empirical definition. Nevertheless, the problem requires still further study and research.In this paper the writer intends to define teacher competence by the identification of teachers' roles and the professional competencies these roles require, and to relate the findings of this study to teacher education.This particular study is limited by the lack of information about the subject as it is approached here.Thesis (M.A.