Countries which have not already done so need to define explicitly what competences are
required by any professional involved in the initial or continuous education of teachers, in
whichever institutional setting they may work. (European Commission 2013 :7)In the report such definitions of‘competence-based criteria’are seen as providing
the basis for selection and recruitment procedures and the subsequent crafting of
‘specific professional development opportunities’(p. 6). These are also seen as
nationally defined. The competences which teacher educators are said to need
reflect their multi-faceted and complex roles (Davey 2013 : 79). They include those
related to knowledge of: thefirst orderfield of schooling; the second orderfield of
teacher education (Murray 2002 ); research (or‘knowledge development’as it is
termed in the report); the educational systems in which they work; leadership skills;
and more general abilities to integrate knowledge. A further area is the need for
‘transversal competences’ which enable teacher educators to work across and
between schools and HEIs. This competence is seen as central as it supports the
required‘active collaboration’(European Commission 2013 : 2) between all those
educating teachers, in whichever setting they work—a collaboration which is
acknowledged as essential for high quality teacher education.
This analysis of teacher educators’competences is broadly akin to other defi-
nitions of expertise in teacher education, particularly those of the Dutch Association
of Teacher Educators (VELON). Many of these definitions also use the language of
competences or the closely related concept of‘standards’. These competences are
then also used as the basis for providing professional learning. In educational
research, there have been criticisms of this kind of approach (for example,
Kelchtermans 2013 ) which is seen as generating quality control instruments, failing
to capture professional complexity and holding professionals accountable in inap-
propriate ways. Nevertheless, this inter-linking of competence and professional
learning is also seen in many professional initiatives in European nations.
In 2002, for example, VELON established a professional standards framework
for teacher educators and embedded these in a procedure that enables teacher
educators to show how they meet those standards. Teacher educators, voluntarily,
composed a structured portfolio that was discussed with peer assessors; they were
then accredited as members of VELON for 4 years. Studies into the portfolios that
teacher educators constructed in this registration procedure showed that they were
predominantly practice oriented, with the theoretical underpinning of actions and
thoughts rarely made explicit. The reason given for this lack of theoretically
underpinning was that teacher educators found it hard to locate relevant literature in
the abundance of research about teacher education. This has led to new initiatives,
as detailed later in this chapter.
Other professional interest groups including ATE in the USA, Mofet in Israel
and VELOV in Flanders also have standards for teacher educators, which have been
developed through intra-professional initiatives. These standards cover broadly
similar areas to those of VELON, although the Flemish (and Dutch standards) start
with principles, responsibilities and practice, whereas the American and Israeli
standards are described in terms of ideal behaviours.
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