Self-evaluation of Future Teacher Professional Competences: a Case Study in Latvia

Teacher education is the focus of many organisations as an influential tool for improving the quality of our lives, including sustainable development (UNESCO 2022, OECD 2016). Similar to other educational fields, teacher education is increasingly being viewed through the lens of competences rather than just subject knowledge and skills. In Latvia a new competency-based curriculum has been introduced at all levels of education (Skola2030). Therefore, it is important to review the competences required for teachers and developed in higher education to potentially improve the quality of education for their future students and provide experiences in developing competences with which students will have to work in schools as well. In this research we use a self-evaluation instrument developed through the project “Development and Implementation of the Education Quality Monitoring System” (2nd round) for measuring future teachers’ professional competences. The results show that overall, future educators self-evaluate their competences highly in all sub-competence areas. Higher self-evaluations are seen in the area of professional development, while lower self-evaluations are seen in the area of planning learning.