Competence-based teacher education: A change from Didaktik to Curriculum culture?

Abstract

This paper explores the substance of competence-driven changes in teacher education curricula by testing the possibility of using a framework distinguishing between the German pedagogical culture of Didaktik and the Anglo-Saxon Curriculum culture to describe the substance of these changes. Data about the perceptions of competence-driven changes in teacher education curricula has been collected in 30 in-depth interviews with teacher educators, student teachers, and their school mentors in Serbia, and analysed with the help of qualitative data processing software. The coding procedures involved classification of utterances into five groups relating to the perceptions of (1) teacher evaluation, (2) teacher competence in subject matter, pedagogy, and curriculum, (3) understanding of the education system and contribution to its development, (4) teacher competences in dealing with values and child-rearing, and (5) changes in teacher education curricula related to these groups of competence. The perceptions in each group of utterances were interpreted in terms of their alliance with Didaktik or Curriculum cultures. The findings indicate that the framework cannot be used as a continuum since the utterances aligned with the two cultures co-exist in the individual responses, but could be useful as a reflection tool in teacher education curricula.

Keywords:

• Competence
• Curriculum
• Didaktik
• educational change
• teacher education

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our colleagues Anna van der Want, A.C. and Predrag Lažetić who acted as raters and contributed valuable comments that helped us clarify the categories and acheive high inter-rater agreement in the coding procedures. Thanks go to Alison Closs for checking the English language in the final version of the article. We are also grateful to all the teachers, teacher educators, and student teachers who participated in the study.

Notes

1. European reform process based on cooperation between ministries and higher education institutions from 46 countries with the view towards enhancing comparability of degrees and quality assurance processes, mobility of students and staff.