engleski

Teachers' professional development: Context, perspectives, and challenges (pp. 133-158)

Professional development of teachers is observed as a lifelong process of learning and development in the personal, social, and narrow field of expertise. It is important how teachers perceive their competences and assess the possibilities for their professional activity in the direction of critical, independent, and responsible decision-making and action. A person’s worldview, attitude toward oneself and others, the perception of the relationship between the individual and school, family and culture in general, knowledge, attitude toward the learning content and methods of teaching, as well as all the experiences that have shaped the idea of what teaching is and what a teacher's work includes, affect the interpretation and importance which teachers attribute to their teaching experience. In fact, many authors see this as the reason why many professional development programmes do not have a genuine impact on changing teaching practices and even less on student learning. It is therefore very important to understand how teachers progress professionally and which conditions contribute to and encourage their growth. The obtained results show that Croatian and Slovenian teachers on average assess themselves as well trained, which raises the question whether the teachers provided realistic estimates of their qualifications or if they perhaps chose to give responses that showed themselves in a more favourable light than reality. The Croatian teachers assess their qualifications as being significantly higher than Slovenian ones in all areas covered by this research (competence to analyze strengths and weaknesses of their educational work, establishment of a constructive dialogue with their counterparts and a cooperative partnership with other schools, institutions, and parents) except in the competence of mentoring pre-service students and teacher- trainees. One may wonder whether Croatian teachers are truly more competent or whether their self-assessment is less self-critical, i.e. whether Slovenian teachers are too critical in assessing their competences in relation to Croatian teachers. Despite the relatively high assessments of their readiness for professional activity, it was found that Croatian and Slovenian teachers assess the lowest their capacity for action in research and development projects, mentoring pre-service students and student-trainees, and establishing a cooperative partnership with other schools and institutions. This suggests that not all teachers have been trained to provide mentorship or to assume the role of a mentor. It is also possible that teachers understand to a somewhat lesser degree the collaboration on various research and development projects and the establishment of cooperation with the wider community as one of their key tasks. Based on this it can be noted that these are areas in which it would make sense to apply more incentives and support to teachers in the future.

Professional development ; teachers ; status ; transversal competencies

Znanstvena monografija POKLICNI RAZVOJ UČITELJEV: Ugled in transverzalne kompetence / TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Status and transversal competencies (2019.) je prijevod na slovenski i engleski jezik u izdanju Znanstvene založbe Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani i Učiteljskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Rijeci. Tiskana knjiga COBISS.SI-ID=299773184 ISBN 978-961-06-0196-8 E-knjiga COBISS.SI- ID=299762944 ISBN 978-961-06-0195-1 (pdf ) Originalni izvor "Profesionalni razvoj učitelja: status, ličnost i transverzalne kompetencije" na hrvatskom jeziku objavljen je u široj verziji (2017.) u sklopu istoimenog znanstveno-istraživačkog projekta Sveučilišta u Rijeci 13.10.2.2.02.