Key competencies: developing an instrument for assessing trainee teachers’ understanding and views

ABSTRACT

Key competencies straddle an educational reform that has taken on a central role within the European Union. However, there is a lack of empirical instruments aimed at assessing preservice teachers’ opinion of competency-based policies, their self-evaluation regarding such policies, and their understanding of the intended rationale behind competency mandates. Instruments with similar aims in other contexts suffer psychometric shortcomings. Therefore, the authors’ aim was to design an instrument to examine primary preservice teachers’ beliefs about the role of key competencies in education, self-evaluate their understanding of the concept of key competencies, and determine if they understood the intended interdisciplinary focus. A three-phase pilot (n = 295, n = 277, n = 263) was carried out with each phase aimed at progressively improving the instrument’s psychometric soundness. Drawing from data obtained from the third pilot, the psychometric scale properties are reported for a much-needed assessment tool.

KEYWORDS:

• Primary preservice teacher attitudes
• educational policy
• key competencies
• self-evaluation
• policy evaluation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Antonio Ruiz Bueno for his feedback and members of the DIDPATRI research group for their assistance in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct application of this research.

Notes

1. The current scales were piloted with teacher trainees, but through slight modification and additional piloting could potentially be used with current teachers. It is our aim to use these items in longitudinal and multilevel analyses in the future.

2. Catalan is the habitual language of instruction in undergraduate university classes in Catalonia. Items were translated into English by the authors for the purposes of this publication.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universitat de Barcelona’s REDICE program 18-2080 and REDICE ACCIÓ 16-1563, both internal Universitat de Barcelona grants respectively for research into teaching innovation and its subsequent publishing.

Notes on contributors

Ann E. Wilson-Daily

Ann E. Wilson-Daily is a Serra Húnter Fellow at the Faculty of Education at the Universitat de Barcelona. Her interests lie in the areas of teacher training, education policy and its relation to action, and the sociology of education.

Maria Feliu-Torruella

Maria Feliu-Torruella is a full professor at the Faculty of Education at the Universitat de Barcelona. She specializes in social science teacher training at the primary and ECE levels and has led teacher innovation projects related to key competencies.

Mireia Romero Serra

Mireia Romero Serra a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education at the Universitat de Barcelona. Her current research focuses teacher training related to heritage education and project-based learning.