Development of Transversal Competences: A Current Challenge in Teacher Education
Development of Transversal Competences: A Current Challenge in Teacher Education

Summary/Abstract: This study responds to the growing demand to adapt the content and methods of teachertraining programs to reflect the rapid emergence of new, nonpareil 21st century professionsin the labour market, predominantly due to the information technology revolution. It is clearthat future teachers will increasingly be expected to have a wider range of professionalteaching skills, but also transversal skills and competences. For this purpose, a Slovak researchteam at Matej Bel University prepared an experiment by transforming a traditional foreignlanguage CLIL course into a new course Global Encounters in Local Settings, aimed atdeveloping not only pre-service teachers’ multilingual and intercultural competences, but alsoa variety of other transversal skills and competences (critical thinking, intercultural competence,time management, teamwork, plurilingual and interpersonal communication skills and others).The innovative components in the new course are student-centredness, service learning andthe collaboration between domestic and foreign students. GELS pilot teaching was launchedin February 2020 and has been repeated during four following semesters (up to December2021), despite severe pandemic constraints. The author presents some results from theverification of this pedagogical innovation in the teachers’ university training curriculum.It has been tested by three quantitative-qualitative research methods: pre-term and post-termquestionnaires, content analysis of students’ seminar work, reflective individual diaries andgroup reports. Although the results from all of them are briefly stated, this focused on theresults from the last mentioned analysis – diaries and group reports. The results of the dataanalysis show that this innovation has proved to be feasible and effective in achieving anincrease in students’ transversal skills, especially project management skills, interpersonal skills, communication skills, ICT skills, time and project management, tolerance and flexibility,critical and reflective thinking skills and open-mindedness.

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