The Provisional Model

A useful model of professional competence has to do two things at once. It has to name the components of competence clearly. And it has to show how those components hold together as a whole. The provisional model attempts both. It is provisional because it is open to refinement, not because it is unfinished.

At the heart of the model are four core components, bound together by a layer of meta-competences, producing a range of outcomes.

The four core components

The model starts with four components. Each component is a different kind of competence. A reflective practitioner needs all four.

Knowledge / cognitive competence

This is work-related knowledge and the ability to put it into use. It includes what the teacher knows about the subject, about teaching, about students, and how they apply that knowledge.

This is the cognitive base of the work. Without it, nothing else has anything to operate on.

Functional competence

This is the ability to perform the specific tasks of the profession. For a teacher, it is the ability to plan a lesson, run a discussion, mark assignments, manage a class, and so on.

Functional competence is the doing layer. It is what the teacher actually performs in the classroom and the staffroom.

Personal / behavioural competence

This is about adopting appropriate behaviour in work-related situations. It includes things like self-control, professional conduct, the ability to work with others, and the personal qualities that show up in interaction.

A teacher with strong knowledge and strong functional skill but poor personal behaviour does not yet have full competence. The interaction matters.

Values / ethical competence

This is the ability to make sound judgements in work-related situations, especially when ethics are involved. A teacher faces ethical decisions regularly: how to handle a struggling student, how to respond to a parent, how to weigh fairness against efficiency.

Without values competence, the other three can be turned to ends that harm students or colleagues.

The constituents of each core component

Each of the four components is made up of constituents, which are groups of individual competences. These constituents help break down each component into things a teacher can actually work on.

Knowledge / cognitive component

This component has four constituents.

1. Tacit / practical knowledge. Knowledge linked closely to functional or personal competences, often not explicit. This is close to Schon’s reflection-in-action: the knowledge a teacher uses without being able to fully describe it.
2. Technical, theoretical knowledge. The underlying knowledge bases, including their application, transfer, and synthesis. This is the formal subject knowledge and pedagogical theory.
3. Procedural knowledge. The how, what, and when of more routine tasks of teaching. This is the practical know-how.
4. Contextual knowledge. General background knowledge about education and teaching. This includes knowing the wider system the teacher works within.

A reflective teacher works on all four. Strong on theory but weak on procedure produces a teacher who knows what should happen but cannot make it happen. Strong on procedure but weak on theory produces a teacher who can perform but cannot adapt.

Functional component

The functional component has constituents that group the kinds of action a teacher takes.

1. Occupation-specific tasks. The teaching-specific tasks, like running a class or designing a unit.
2. Organisational and process tasks. Planning, organising, managing, monitoring. These run alongside teaching but are not the same as teaching.
3. Cerebral activities. Mental activities like thinking, analysing, reasoning during the work.
4. Psychomotor activities. Physical activities like moving around the classroom, writing on the board, demonstrating practical work.

These constituents are useful because they remind the teacher that the work has different demands at the same time. Reflection might surface a strength in one constituent and a weakness in another.

Personal / behavioural component

This component has two constituents.

1. Social / vocational behaviours. Things like self-confidence, task focus, stamina, and professional bearing.
2. Inter-professional behaviours. Behaviours that relate to interaction with people from other professions. For a teacher, this includes interaction with social workers, doctors, parents in their professional roles, school administrators.

Values / ethical component

This component has two constituents.

1. Personal values. Including being directed by personal moral or religious codes.
2. Professional values. Including being directed by professional codes of conduct, with student-centredness as a core orientation.

These two can pull in different directions. A reflective practitioner knows when their personal values are guiding action and when their professional code is. Honest awareness of which one is in charge at a given moment is part of values competence.

Meta-competences

The four core components are brought together in a coherent framework by an over-riding principle: meta-competences. Meta-competences are the higher-level capacities that bind the core components into a working whole.

The meta-competences are:

1. Communication. The ability to receive, process, and send information in ways that other people can use.
2. Self-development. The ability to keep learning, growing, and refining one’s own competence.
3. Creativity. The ability to come up with new approaches when standard ones do not fit.
4. Analysis. The ability to break down a situation, problem, or task and see its parts.
5. Problem-solving. The ability to move from a problem statement to a workable solution.

These meta-competences cut across all four core components. A teacher applies analysis to their subject knowledge, to their teaching strategy, to their interpersonal interactions, and to their ethical decisions. The meta-competences are the engine that drives the components into action together.

A teacher with strong components but weak meta-competences ends up with knowledge and skills that do not connect. A teacher with weak components but strong meta-competences has nothing to bring the meta-competences to bear on. Both layers are needed.

The outcomes the model produces

The meta-competences and the four core components, with their constituents, produce a range of outcomes. Three kinds of outcome are worth distinguishing.

Macro-outcomes

These are the broad overall results of professional activity. Things like the teacher’s reputation in the school, the long-term progress of their students, the contribution they make to the profession.

Macro-outcomes are slow to emerge. They show up after years, not lessons.

Micro-outcomes

These are the outcomes of very specific activities under any of the core components. The way a particular question was answered. The mark given on a particular assignment. The way a difficult conversation with a parent went.

Micro-outcomes are the daily texture of competence. They accumulate.

Partial outcomes

These are the results of partially completed activities. Many teaching activities are not finished in a single lesson, week, or term. The result of a unit on critical thinking, for example, may show up months later in how students approach a different subject.

Partial outcomes are easy to ignore because they are incomplete. The reflective practitioner pays attention to them anyway, because they often signal what is happening before the macro-outcomes catch up.

Flashcard

What are the four core components and the five meta-competences in the provisional model?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Components: knowledge/cognitive, functional, personal/behavioural, values/ethical. Meta-competences: communication, self-development, creativity, analysis, problem-solving.

The four components name kinds of competence a teacher needs. The five meta-competences bind the components together so they operate as a whole. The model produces three kinds of outcome: macro (broad long-term results), micro (specific activity results), and partial (results of incomplete activities).

Using the model for self-assessment

The provisional model is most useful as a structure for self-assessment. A reflective practitioner can ask, for each component:

1. Which constituents am I strongest in?
2. Which constituents am I weakest in?
3. Which meta-competence is currently my limit?
4. What macro-outcomes am I producing? What micro-outcomes? What partial outcomes that I have not yet noticed?

This kind of structured self-assessment is harder than asking “am I a good teacher?” It is also more useful, because the answers point to specific areas for development.

A teacher who works through the model once a year, in writing, tends to develop more evenly than one who relies on instinct alone.