COMPETENCIES OF FUTURE VOCATIONAL TEACHERS: PERSPECTIVE OF IN-SERVICE TEACHERS AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERTS

Abstract

Workforce in the 21st century has been marked by the acceleration of disruptive moves as the Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Society 5.0. This era requires human resources with new competencies that may be far different from current competencies. To present vocational education that is able to facilitate future human resource to learn compentencies that meet the need of future changes, vocational teachers should master new competencies comprehensively. This study aims to formulate the core vocational teacher competencies, hard skills and soft skills, which are in line with the various demands of the future. This qualitative research involved active vocational teachers and vocational education experts in several Focus Group Discussions and questionnaire completion. Research questions are focused on reflection of current teacher competencies and perceptions of teacher competencies in the future. The results lead to a conclusion that for future teachers, the core competencies are the pedagogic, content, and ICT competencies. These competences are relevant to hard skills aspects categorised as curriculum and content. In the aspect of soft skills, category living in the world is dominant. The three aspects considered very important for future vocational teachers are able to be exemplary, honest, and discipline. As a consequence, this research suggests to teacher educational institutes that produce vocational teachers to develop the teacher education curricula that integrates these key competencies in their vocational education teacher standards.