Student Teachers' Initial Personal and Professional Civic Competences and How They Interact

Citizenship has become one of the main objectives for European education systems. Therefore, it is expected that teachers are well prepared and equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to act as role models and to engage students in democratic citizenship. However, many scholars have concerns about the limited and inconsistent immersion of future teachers in the field of citizenship during teacher training. Consequently, the following question is raised: to what extend are first year pre-service teachers of all grade levels and across all subjects (in primary and secondary schools) prepared and willing to (1) participate in a democratic society and (2) teach civic education ? To answer this question, a survey was administered among 1907 first-year pre-service teachers across 26 bachelor and masters’ teacher training programs in Flanders. Data was gathered in the period of September 21 until October 20 2022. The focus was placed on two clusters of civic competences: (1) personal competences teachers need to function well as citizens in a democratic society and to act as role models for their students and (2) professional competences that teachers deploy to effectively teach civic education. Multilevel analysis was applied on the dataset. Preliminary descriptive results concerning the professional competences indicate that young pre-service teachers do find it important to cover topics such as the European Union, compliance with the law, structural inequalities, structural discrimination, etc. in their lessons. However, their sense of self-efficacy to develop and implement civic education courses appears to be rather low. This is in line with the results concerning the personal competences: students tend to feel unable to participate in a democratic society and their sense of political efficacy is weak. Although further analysis is required, these preliminary results suggest that teacher training programs should not only strengthen the professional, technical competences of future teachers; active participation in today’s society should also be fostered. Suggestions for teacher training programs to do so, are provided. An important note here is that this research is the first part of a longitudinal study in which the development of the civic competences of pre-service and young in-service teachers is explored. The current study gives insights into the civic competences of future teachers who are at the very beginning of their teacher training program .