Co-operation as an aspect of professional commitment : implication for the management of teacher competence

M.Ed.This research project is aimed at eliciting input and opinions from teachers on how they perceive teacher competence. Theoretical constructs around which teacher competence is designed, are: the learning environment professional commitment order and discipline educational foundation teacher reflection co-operative ability efficiency; and leadership style These constructs are reduced to two factors, namely collaborative and educative competences. This study concentrates on co-operation as an aspect of professional commitment, and its implication for the management of teacher competence. Co-operation is defined as a "harmony model" whose aims are a collective sense of responsibility and participant management and therefore communal decision-making. It was found that co-operation in education could be divided into co-operative learning and co-operative teaching. It was further discovered that true professionals will invariably participate on people-strategy teams, collaborative teaching teams and encourage collaborative learning by the students. Certain skills were found to be essential if teachers are to positively influence learning gains in co-operative learning, e.g. giving complete explanations to questions; structured rotation of individual roles; meeting needs of high achievers and not retard them; direction-giver; generator of additional answers. Since very little is done by way of teacher development, cooperative teaching teams were found to serve as substitutes in developing teachers' talents and their competence