What are Teachers' Professional Competencies?

The series marks 100 years since the passing of a statute creating what was known in 1919 as the University Department for the Training of Teachers. Join us this term as we mark the Oxford University Department of Education’s 100th anniversary through this series of public events that pay particular tribute to our contributions in the field of teacher education today.

Teacher competencies have been discussed relatively extensively in the literature, often linked in educational policy discourses, teacher standards, or even intended outcomes of teacher education. But what do teacher competencies actually mean, how they are related to the core of teacher’s work, teacher knowledge and action, and teacher learning in teacher education. This presentation will elaborate teacher competencies by focusing on teaching as a thinking practice (cf. Lampert, 1998), and teacher knowledge, behavior, and agency. Through this, the aim is to understand the complexity of teacher competencies both theoretically and empirically. By leaning on the empirical evidence, the presentation will try to answer to the question: what kinds of characteristics of teacher education cultivate student teacher learning in becoming competent and agentic teachers? And why should we be interested in them?