The key reflexive competence of teacher professionalization

Abstract

The article entitled, Reflexive Competence – the Key to Educators’ Professional Development, is part of the doctoral thesis3 on Reflexive Competence or “the ability to integrate or connect our performance with an understanding of the performance of others, so that we can learn from our actions and are able to adapt to changes and unforeseen circumstances” is presented in the framework of professional development of educators. The concept of professional competency is deepened in an elaborate study of the competencies of the teaching profession established by different countries4 carried out until the relevant contribution on reflexive competence is reached by various participants of the study. From the analysis of the teaching practice, this study manages to determine the concept of reflexive competence of which indicates its structure and reveals its dynamics. Through the implementation and evaluation of a training program based on the development of reflexivity, this research shows that in the professional development of educators, reflexive competence emerges as the one with the greatest professiona l potentials. This study also justifie s that reflexive competenc e presents an instrumental, functional and transversal character in the profession, which is active in mobilizing all the teaching competences.

Today, the discussion on the of teachers is one of the key points in terms of educational change, in a context where the process of decentralization of pedagogical management and the transformations of society call for a rethinking of the functions and roles of educators to achieve the goals of education in the 21st century.

Keywords : Competence, Reflexive Competence, professional development of reflexivity.