Compliance of Vocational Teachers with the Skill Standard for Vocational Teacher

Abstract

Striving to establish a unified qualification system, problems related to vocational education and training arc raising more and more concern in all the countries of the European Union, since vocational education and training have to meet the changing requirements of the labour market and the acquired qualifications arc to be recognised. Moreover, it is of a particular importance to ensure personal satisfaction of employees, their development, involvement and efficiency. 130 Therefore, standards of vocational teacher, which are based on competences implying objective and subjective factors, arc being established, the system of vocational training and professional development is being reformed at a national level. This research aims to identify the effect of vocational education and training policy on vocational teachers: their attitude to the skill standard for vocational teacher, the competencies they want to develop and to what extent they are satisfied with the current system of professional development. The research results show that competences of personal self-development conform with the standard for vocational teacher to the greatest extent. However, the most favourable evaluation was attached to general competences of personal self-development (e.g. to assess and develop own personal qualities) and competences regarding application of information technologies. The parameters, indicating the highest maturity of a personality (responsibility, independence, self-analysis, abilities to reflect own performance and behaviour) gained lowest evaluation. The competences of teaching module planning, teaching and development were evaluated similarly: slightly fewer respondents considered them to be very important but a bigger number of educators referred to these competences as relevant. The most favourably evaluated competences comprise those of planning of teaching module content and teaching, whereas competences to assess achievements of teaching module were ranked lowest. The least relevant competencies include: abilities to conduct pedagogical experiments, to interpret and to adequately evaluate achievements and obstacles in the context of aims of teaching module, etc. Competences of school and education system development take third place referring to their compliance with the standard for vocational teacher. Competences of improvement of school as an organisation are evaluated more favourably. The highest ratings are attached to skills of conflict resolution, abilities to ensure contacts among schools, the labour market, enterprises and organisations. Abilities to disseminate own experience, to conduct didactic experiments implementing innovations, to develop teaching programmes and teaching materials for external contracting parties, etc. Competencies of projecting of vocational education and training arc considered to show the lowest compliance with the standard for vocational teacher. According to the respondents, competences of improvement of vocational education and training programmes are more important: abilities to identify the situation in the labour market, to plan the process of teaching programme implementation, to improve content elements of a particular development programme were ranked highest, whereas skills and abilities to conduct internal audit, to identify reasons for changes in the labour market and consequences of them were considered to be less relevant. It was revealed that the lower the rating of the competence importance, the bigger the number of vocational teachers, who fail to identify their own relations with them, i.e. they omit them or refer to them as irrelevant. The statistical data analysis highlighted the tendency that the attitudes of vocational teachers mainly depend on their participation in professional development courses and their qualification category. Fewer than half of the vocational teachers in the survey want to develop their own competences independently. The majority of them expressed their willingness to improve abilities of achievement assessment. However, none of the respondents pointed out competences of personal self-development, which indicates educators' insufficient perception of their importance. The attention of professional development system to qualification development satisfies only 42.4 % of vocational teachers. A particular concern is required for development of abilities to improve teaching module programmes. Intention of vocational teachers to independently develop abilities and assistance provided by qualification systems comprise the same competence groups (6 out of the 12 provided for in the standards). According to the respondents' opinion, development of competences to assess achievements and to improve vocational training programmes lacks proper concern from the qualification system itself, whereas focus on competences of teaching module programme improvement surpasses their expectations. Working experience (on ability to assess situation in the labour market) and the speciality acquired (on competences of school and education system development) have the most considerable effect on independent development of educators' own abilities. The satisfaction with concern of qualification system in development of abilities mostly depend on educators' qualification category (in competences of personal self-development); experience of pedagogical work (in competences of teaching module content planning) and the speciality acquired (in competences of vocational training programme projecting).