Teacher lifelong-learning education based on competences. An exploratory study of Infant and Primary school teachers’ perceptions

Abstract

In-service teacher education is one of the standards which better defines the quality of education. As a part of the innovation development of the educational scope, competences and skills are becoming essential issues during the training of students, therefore the teacher role and their training necessarily needs to be guided to the development of competences. In this paper, we present the results of a research in which we used several investigation methods. The aim of the study is to show the views and needs of the teachers working at childhood and primary levels in the community of Cantabria. The study of those needs includes their learning culture and training needs in the sense of the professional skills and competences that a teacher should perform. The results of the study show a high weakness of the in-service teacher education, and the teachers polled for the investigation require further implementation of the training given to its context. They fully believe that their professional performance can be highly improved through in-service teacher education. As a conclusion, it seems that it is very necessary to improve the training offer for education professionals. An option can be to improve the training and development of skills, attitudes and techniques applicable to different educational situations and contexts.