The development of teachers‘ professional competence

This chapter offers a theoretical overview of the development of teachers’ professional competence. Drawing on the literature on teacher quality and teacher education, it discusses two diverging perspectives on the development of teachers’ professional knowledge and skills, namely, the “individual aptitude” approach and the “professional qualification” approach. It then presents a theoretical model that integrates various theoretical approaches that have been used to explain the emergence of interindividual differences in teacher competence. Based on empirical evidence, this model predicts that teachers’ professional competence develops through the active uptake of various learning opportunities and that individual characteristics influence the degree to which teachers utilize these learning opportunities. Moreover, the model assumes that the provision of learning opportunities is dependent on certain contextual variables, such as the education system or school-specific characteristics. This model of the determinants and consequences of professional competence provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for the empirical studies presented in the subsequent chapters. [Editor]