Four Competencies Of Professional Teachers

The success of educational plans in each country depends on the educators armed with scientific competencies and professional skills. Researchers in education have done many researches to find out the competencies of a good teachers. Teacher need to organize effective teaching-learning process so that student understand how to learn and ulitize their knowlegde appropriately in their daily life and society. Therefore, teachers need to develop and master some competencies in accordance with the educational transfromation in practice as well as professional activities (Surasak, 2013). There are four cmpetencies of a professional teacher which shoul be mastered: proffesional competencies, pedagogic competencies, social competencies, and personal competencies.

The first competence is professional competence.  Teacher have an important role in improving the quality of education which are required to have the expertise, competence and high professionalism for their duty (Mc Cully in Raka Joni, 2008).professionalism here means a conditions, directions, values, goals, and quality of expertise and authority relating to a person’s livelihood. Kalbers and Forgarty (1995) theorized five individual element of professionalism: believe their work has an interest, comitted to the public good services, the need for autonomy on the job requirements, support self-regulation for their work, affiliation withe the profession members.

The second competence is pedagogical competence. Pedagogical competence is competence related to the ability to manage student’s learning, including: a) understanding of the learners, b) the design and implementation of learning, c) evaluation of learning outcomes, and d) development potential of learners (Directorate General of Higher Education 2006). Pedagogical competence can be grouped into two important parts: first, how the teacher have the ability to manage learners. Second, how the teacher have the ability to manage learning well. Both of these theoritically obtained when the teacher study at school / college teacher in a few years (Nor, M. 2008). Especially in classroom teaching-learning management which is the bigger part that need teacher’s  roles in establishing a good teaching-learning climate. If the teacher obtained higher level of curriculum and knowledge management, students’ learning achievement seamed to be improved. It might be caused by the educational policy to enhance school quality whereby school has to determine its focus to improve students’ learning through excellent instructional management. This result was supported by Mana (2007) who found that classroom management had positive effect of students’ quality. Because teacher are considered as the most responsible side in educational field, the improvement of pedagogical quality need to go through the process of academic education (Abraham, 2008).

The next is social competencies. As social human being, a teacher must be able to communicate with other parties including the learners. The communication includes teacher relationship with the head master of the school, fellow teachers, students’ parent and the society. As a person who lives in the mid of community, teacher need to have the ability to blend with the community. The blending ability must be owned by teacher, because if it is not, the interaction will be stiff and the corresponding result is less acceptable to the public. Chan, at al. (2005) assert that social competence, which includes ethics, dedication, social skills, and experience is the crystallization of a teacher professionalism, which was form within the family, community and school. Because teacher is a role model for the learners, when the teacher have the sufficient, emotional and spiritual aspect, learners need to be introduced to the social intelligence, so they have a conscience, a sense of caring, empathy and sympathy for others (Ministry of Education, 2007).

The last is personal competencies. As mentioned before, teacher not only regarded as professionals, but also as individuals with civic responsibilities and as the role models with a public educational function which make it necessary that they be qualified in these area. Personal competence or individual competence according to Joni (2008) needs special attentions , because most of the personality is not formed through direct learning in the context of formal education, but most are formed as a result of accumulated escort learning experience gained on preposition and previous education are formed even in family environment. It is necessary therefore personal competence observed with in-dept interview with mixed approach, while others competence is approached quantitatively. In the study of Bhargava & Pathy (2011) found that preferred teachers’ personal competencies of the students are confidence, intelligence, friendliness, politeness and patience while the preferred teachers’ personal competencies include knowledge of subject matter, effective communication skills, punctuality, being a disciplinarian and understanding the nature of child psychology. So, et al (1996) recognized the strong influence of personal factors of student teacher in developing professional competence. Before the students reach their student-teaching phase, their personal qualities and professional should have been polished. In this line of reasoning, teachers’ competencies are essential to improve the quality of the students.

In conclusion, the overall competency of the respondents is good and totally needed to be a professional teacher. It can be interfered that there is still a lot of room for improvement for teacher and that while in the college, there is need to harness these competencies to be better prepared in student teaching. The teacher should have a balance of the four competencies above. In addition, teacher also need to conduct seminar or workshop in order to improve teacher self-development. And the school administration should assist teacher to develop their competencies in managing curriculum and knowledge management, provide sufficient budget to support teacher to access learning source, provide efficient staff development program and from networking with other school teacher for sharing knowledge and self-development purposes.