From Professional Learner to Learning Professional: Expectations, Preconditions and Means
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Lecturer at the Chair of Entrepreneurship of the University of Tartu and the Department of Entrepreneurship of the Estonian Business School (EBS); PhD (Educational Science)
The development of society and technology creates new jobs and the need for specialists with new kind of competences. It means that the outdated, lecture-based traditional teaching methods that rely on theoretical models are not suitable for acquiring the competences that will be needed in the future.
The purpose of the article is to explain what preparation of professional experts who meet the needs of the labour market means, and what changes it requires in the organisation of education. Besides that, I will try to give a brief survey of what kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes should be developed with the help of general and basic education, and which means support the application of these changes. To get an overview of the situation, I posed three questions:
- Whatkind of competencies do the workers of the future or learning professionals need?
- What does becoming a learning professional of one’s profession require?
- What pedagogical instruments help achieve the new academic targets resulting from the changes in the economicenvironment?
The article points out that in the preparation of the workers of the future or learning professionals, the developing of key competences is important. This has to be done resolutely and purposefully, because it is a long-time and complicated process. Principles of interactive pedagogy make a good framework for developing key competences. Among other things, it is important to remember that improving of entrepreneurship competences should not be undervalued in the course of developing of other key competences, because it may remain unclear to the learner how these competences should be applied in working life and/or as an entrepreneur, or in creating values for consumers or the society as a whole. Education system must support the changes resulting from the developing of key competences at all levels, and the teachers or lecturers are not the only ones responsible for it. The changes have to be essential, not formal.