Standards of teacher competencies in Serbia: Comparative analysis with selected countries

Many countries have embarked on creating standards of teacher competencies with the ultimate goal of improving teaching in their schools. The aim of this paper is to compare Standards of teacher competencies in Serbia with those in countries/regions which perform well on PISA (Australia, Singapore, Ontario, Estonia, the Netherlands and Slovenia) in order to highlight important similarities and differences which potentially account for teacher quality in those countries, as well as inform policymakers in Serbia on how to reformulate standards of teacher competencies and, consequently, improve teacher quality and pupil outcomes. The criteria on which sets of standards in different countries are compared are: development of standards (who and how developed the standards), content of standards (subject knowledge, didactics, etc.), differentiation of standards (existence of separate sets of competencies for novice teachers, experienced teachers, etc.), purpose of standards (teacher certification, performance monitoring, career progression, accreditation of teacher education providers, etc.), and context in which the standards operate (whether they are a part of a larger framework of standards and educational practices or not). Several important differences exist between the Standards of teacher competencies in Serbia and selected countries, the greatest being the much higher level of utilisation of standards in various segments of teacher professional lives in those countries than in Serbia. Recommendations for the improvement of standards of teacher competencies in Serbia are drawn.