Adult educators’ core competences

Abstract

Which competences do professional adult educators require? The article discusses this topic in a comparative perspective, finding that adult educators' required competences are wide-ranging, heterogeneous, and complex. However, it seems that certain competence requirements can be identified which transcend national, cultural and functional boundaries. The article summarises these requirements in four themes: communicating subject knowledge, taking students' prior learning into account, supporting a learning environment, and reflecting on one's own performance. The ability to train students to use what they have learned in practice (knowledge transfer) seems to be overlooked in the different competence profiles analysed.

Developing Psychopedagogical and Methodical Competences in Special / Inclusive Education Teachers

“…As a result, their training in the area of special education might be without depth, their area of competences being limited to recognizing the problems faced by students with SEN, to using didactic strategies which can be applied to this category of students too, and to empathic communication within the school community. It is necessary, therefore, to develop these psycho-pedagogical and methodical competences of special education teachers, which can be achieved by involving them in projects developed in this field of specialization, or by completing continued professional training courses (Fernández, 2013, Wahlgren, 2016, Mrnjaus, 2012.…”

“…The term competence has a polysemantic nature. Out of the great number of definitions (Boutin, 2004, Tardif, 2003, Aubret & Gilbert, 2003, Chiş, 2006, Potolea & Toma, 2010, Wahlgren, 2016, the one which is complete and functional in connection with the training for the teaching career could be chosen: competence is the proven capacity to adequately choose, combine and use knowledge, abilities and other acquisitions consisting of values and attitudes to successfully solve a certain category of work or learning situation, as well as to achieve professional or personal development effectively and efficiently. In this sense, the structural elements of a competence are: the professional roles or the work / learning tasks which should be carried out, performance standards, the context, the knowledge, the abilities and personality / attitude characteristics.…”

Being and Becoming a Teacher in Initial Literacy and Second Language Education for Adults

“…Research on adult and second-language educators brings up the importance of generic teaching skills (see Freeman & Johnson, 1998;Wahlgren, 2016) and linguistic competence (Tarone & Allwright, 2005). It is considered crucial to focus on these issues in the teacher training.…”

“…Several studies (e.g. Wahlgren, 2016;Sava Luopo, 2009) point out that adult educators are a professional group, which has recently received a lot of attention in the politics of education. These studies show also that there are many emerging policies on the macro level that govern the professionalization of teachers.…”

Profiling adult literacy facilitators in development contexts: An ethnographic study in Ethiopia

“…Openjuru 2002;Youngman and Singh 2005;McCaffery 2004;Diarra 2011;UIL 2012;Doyle et al 2016); with the competences they need to be effective (e.g. Lytle et al 1993;Oluoch et al 2014;Wahlgren 2016); with their sense of identity in their task (e.g. Paluch 2013) or with their educational qualifications (e.g.…”