3 - Teacher Education and Professional Competences

Summary

This chapter further specifies and particularises the concept of competence orientation in teacher education that was first outlined and presented in Chapter 1. First and foremost, it argues that discourse competence in the English language is an overarching goal of all language teaching and learning in schools. Thus, student teachers must fully acquire discourse competence to facilitate the development of their learners’ discursive and linguistic competences. The chapter elaborates on the general concept of competence in more detail before explaining discourse competence as a meta-concept. It also provides examples of how competence orientation is concretised in can-do descriptors for student teachers and outlines a broad range of English language teaching competences that need to be developed. Finally, the chapter explains and illustrates how competence orientation in teacher education is translated into structured curricular programmes.