The Competent Teacher

The Competent Teacher The purpose of this article is to evaluate how teachers need to prepare to be competent for the 21st century. Researchers and teachers are becoming aware that the 21st century classroom is changing dramatically. A team of teacher educators from NIE sat down and asked themselves these questions. : What are the roles of the teacher in the 21st century? What are the competencies teachers need to fulfill these roles?
What can our teacher education programs provide to help them with this task? Some of the roles they identified included: nurturing the whole child, providing quality learning, working with others, and developing a strong set of personal values. They then made a list of core competencies that every trained teacher should have. The core competencies were classified into 3 broad performance dimensions. These dimensions are, professional practice, leadership and management, and personal effectiveness.
Professional practice, is the idea that the teacher takes every opportunity to encourage learning, and believe that all students can learn. And learning isn’t limited to the classroom. The teacher takes every opportunity to improve on his or her own professional practice, in order to provide quality learning. Leadership and management is the idea that a competent teacher is a leader who wins the hearts and minds of the students and sees value in working with parents, colleagues, and other professionals at any and all given times.

Personal effectiveness is the idea that teachers have to hold themselves to the highest moral and ethical standards both in and out of the classroom. The thinking behind this idea is summed up best as “you must believe in yourself before others will believe in you”. I think that for a teacher to be competent in the classroom today they must evaluate themselves on a yearly basis. Every class, and student is different and teaching material changes over time.
Technology is also a key element in the classroom. A teacher must stay up to date and be proficient on the various aspects of the technology world. I believe a teacher should be able to adapt to different classroom settings, students and situations as they are presented. Becoming a teacher is a job where one must expect the unexpected and be able to deal with it on a professional level. (Citation: singteach. nie. edu. sg Issue 23- march/april 2010)