Training of educators in transition : what competencies for tomorrow’s society?

Abstract

Through this paper, the authors, involved with initial and on-going teacher training, share their thoughts on the competencies teachers need in order to facilitate teaching and learning for tomorrow’s needs. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: Who is a teacher and what do we mean by competencies? What actually makes a difference in children’s learning and what is the role of the teacher in this learning process? Teaching is described as being a very stressful job with many teachers experiencing burnout. Positive psychology has changed the focus of our attention from one of psychopathologising to the study of “what makes a person cope and flourish even in such a stressful job environment?”: the focus is therefore shifted to a “resilience perspective”. The authors strongly believe in an education for all, i.e., Inclusive Education, and decided to focus their attention on those teachers who have difficulty in coping and, for this reason, could tend to undermine the effectiveness of inclusive education (Soresi et alii, 2013).