Representation of teaching competency to students and teachers.

Mazilescu, Crisanta Alina ; Popescu Mitroi, Monica Maria ; Draghici, Anca 等

1. INTRODUCTION

The paper's aim is the identification of the social representations of individuals involved in training (teachers and students) in terms of interpersonal and social skills of teachers.

The term competence is used in various scientifically areas having different meanings depending on the specific area where is used. So competence gets a sense in linguistics--a system of knowledge and rules held by an individual that enables him to create infinite language production (Chomski, 1971)--different from the meaning in the legal field--to identify an intervention territory and field--or the meaning of psychology-statements of normalized standards (Jonnaert, 2002)--. The term competence is also found in educational sciences where is frequently spoken about teacher's competency during teaching process and competency acquired by students in the learning process.

Cognitive theories about competency get together two theoretical models which complete each other:

--behavioural model, which focuses on tasks and whose competence referential is characterized by a specific list of competency

--cognitive model, focuses on methods of execution and whose referential competency identify core competence (competent general).

In terms of competency we can make these assessments:--there are two types of competency: acquired competency and necessary competency

--competence has resources that can be structured into categories and subcategories--competence is always part of a context--competence is related to fulfilling one or more tasks

Educational activity is one of the most complex human activities with responsibilities involving human personality, training and development. Chesneau (2004) talks about the four skills that a teacher should have: relevant discipline (discipline skills in the field taught), teaching skills (power to convey knowledge and methods), relational competency (competency to manage interpersonal relationships) and technical skills (competence of using instruments in teaching). Canadian researchers have identified 12 core skills when exercising the teaching profession, skills which have been grouped into six categories with a greater generality range, namely (Ministry of Education in Quebec / Canada, 2001): scientific expertise, teaching skills, psycho-pedagogical skills and classroom management, reflective analysis skills, language skills, skills of school life and professional ethics.

This paper's aim is to identify the representation of the social and interpersonal skills of the teaching profession from the teachers and students' perspective. In this context we wish to identify the differences between teachers' representations, on the one hand, and students' representations on the other hand. Regarding that teacher profession is considered a feminine profession we aim to identify any differences between the representation of male and female subjects in terms of required skills for the teaching profession.

2. METHODOLOGY

Participants in this study (200) are high school pupils and teachers and university students and teachers, each group consists of 50 persons of whom 55 male and 145 female.

The working instrument used in this study is F-JAS 2 (Fleishman-Post Analyses Survey), a job analysis questionnaire developed by Edwin A. Fleishman. F-JAS is a system of description for work situations in terms of skills required. F-21 JAS 2 is about 21 interpersonal and social skills: kindness, flexibility in behaviour, sense of organization, credibility, self-affirmation, negotiation skills, persuasion, socialization, social conformity, situational intelligence, self-control, confidence, pedagogical tact, oral examination, self-realization, openness to experience, independence, perseverance and resistance to prejudice, verbal reasoning, action.

3. RESULTS

From global analyses of results (students and teachers taken together) there were identified the social and interpersonal skills considered necessary for a successful teacher. Thus, achieving top ranking in hierarchy are the following skills: pedagogical tact, self-control, situational intelligence, confidence and sense of organization (fig. 1).

For each interpersonal and social competency, we calculated the average scores. Fleishman considers that one dimension is important and required for a post if the rating is greater than four. For this reason the last three competences they may be removed from the list of teaching skills required: negotiation skills, social conformity and self-affirmation.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Separate analysis of the studied groups (high school and university teachers, high school pupils and students) suggest a relative homogeneity between teachers and students/ pupils in the representation of social and interpersonal skills of teachers. Rank correlations of competency appropriate to the four groups taken into study are presented in Table 1. The strongest correlation in terms of representation of teachers' skills is between students and university teachers (p = 874, p = 0.01), closely followed by the correlation between university teachers and high school teachers (p = 830, p = 0.01).

Gender analysis reveal in this case, a correlation between representations of male and those of female subjects (p = 882, p = 0.01).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Next we wanted to identify the competency assigned to the two groups of trainers by each of the student categories taken into study, high school pupils and students. Students considered important for the profession of teaching: self-control, situational intelligence and kindness, while they consider important for teachers the following competency: pedagogical tact, situational intelligence and self-control.

4. CONCLUSIONS

This study revealed necessary competency for the teaching post, and also shows their importance, compared with one another.

In the field of professional competency for a future teacher the following is essential: pedagogical tact, without which you can not establish and lead the teaching-learning situations. This is reflected in the assessment of three of four groups of subjects included in the study, teachers (university and high school) and students. From the perspective of those involved in training for the profession of teacher representative competency are: pedagogical tact, self-control, situational intelligence, confidence, sense of organization, openness to experience, verbal argumentation, credibility, sociability, flexibility, amiability, perseverance, bias resistance, action, persuasion, self-realisation, verbal investigation and self-realisation. The variety of tasks of a teachers is very high (Mazilescu, 2008) and consequently, and there are many required teacher competency.

The results reveal that representations of the four groups of subjects included in the study, correlate significantly with each other. Similarly we obtain significant correlations between representations and female subjects and those of males.

A limitation of this paper refers to the ratio of teachers' skills because there are identified the skills and their hierarchy but not also their proportions. It would also be interesting to see why self-affirmation, social conformity and negotiation skills are not necessary for a teacher.

Identifying necessary competency required for the teaching profession may be useful in recruitment, allowing its comparison with candidate skills profile in this post.

Equally important, identifying the necessary competency profile of a teacher may be the basis for developing continuous training programs in areas where there are large differences between the real competency of teachers and the standards of this profession.

5. REFERENCES

Aubret, J.; Gilbert, P. & Pigeyre, F. (1993). Savoir et pouvoir: les competences en questions [Knowledge and power: skills issues], Paris: PUF

Chesneau, N. (2004). Qu 'est ce que l'autorite d'un professeur? Comment la soutenir? [What is the authority of a teacher? How to support?] Available from: www.orleanstours.iufm.fr. Accessed on: 2010-07-04

Chomsky, N. (1968). Le langage et la pensee [The language and thought]. Paris: Payot

Ferris, GR.; Wit, t L.A.; Hochwater, W. A. (2001). Interaction of social skill and general mental ability on job performance and salary. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 1075-1082

Jonnaert, P. (2002). Competences et socioconstructivisme, un cadre theorique [Skills and socioconstructivism, a theoretical framework]. Bruxelles: DeBoeck

Mazilescu, C.A. (2008). Etude des caracteristique qui donnent un sens au travail des jeunes enseignant [Study characteristics that give a sense to the work of young teachers], Annals of the University of Oradea, Fascicle of Economical Sciences, ISSN 1582-5450

Tab. 1. Spearman's rho Correlation Coefficient between the
four groups analized

Spearman's rho Stud Proff Proff Pupils
Correl.Coeff Univ Univ HighSch HighSch

studU 1,000 ,874 ** 719 ** ,605 **
profU ,874 ** 1,000 ,830 ** ,513 *
proffHS 719 ** ,830 ** 1,000 ,503 *
pupilsHS ,605 ** ,513 * ,503 * 1,000