ISSN 2414-8385 (Online) ISSN 2414-8377 (Print) European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies September -December 2019 Volume 4, Issue 3 20 Rethinking Teacher Training According to 21 st Century Competences Mihaela Voinea Department of Psychology, Education and Teacher Training, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania Abstract One of the demands of our educational system is the orientantion towards sustenability. To prepare people for future we need teachers who are able to develop the 21 st century competences – the six macro-level competences are considered universally relevant: life-long learning, multi-literatenes, trans-disciplinarity, self- agency, interacting with others and interacting in and with the world. (Marope, 2018). This article focuses on researching the way in which pedagogical practices are changed and on studying the factors which are involved in educational changes. A longitudinaly study on ten years (2008-2018) was set up. Our purpose was to look for and describe how the educational practice has changed. The changes in educational practices are produced when they are sustained by educational politics and environmental factors as well as the teacher`s abilities and traits: reflections, novelty, openness, learning, critical thinking. The gap between present educational practice and future demands can be reduced if system teacher training is rethought according to 21 st century competences. Transformative learning in teacher training is an adequate way of developing teacher`s competences. Keywords: teacher training; future competences; transformative learning 1. Introduction It is a common ideea that schools must be changed according to the new 21 st century demands. All educational researchers, educators and parents underline the need for a new strategy of education focussed on competences for the future: life-long learning, multi-literateness, trans-disciplinarity, self-agency, interacting with others and interacting in and with the world.( Marope, 2018). It is important to underline that changing times are transforming the nature and the role of competencies in every day people`s lives as it was demonstrated by a lot of international education documents (Marope, Griffin, Gallanher, 2017; Marope, 2018). For example the cognitive competences are redefined from 21 st century perspective not only critical thinking and problem resolving, but as a metha-cognitive competences which involve design thinking. Also, the communication and collaboration, social and civic competences are defined according to new future social trends. Among these future competences, critical thinking and social-emotional skills are always mentioned. These competences are necessary more today, because our world is changing every day, it is complex and demanding. The major challenge for the educational system is: What type of changes have to make the teachers in their educational practice? What can the teachers do for a sustainable education? How must training the teachers for new digital generation who will work and live in the future be? This article underlines the idea that even though the educational changes are present in schools nowdays, there are not enough toproduce a significant change, if the teachers do not posses the 21 st century skills. 2. (Are) The Teachers - agents of educational changes? Even in digitalized society, when some voices speak about “the end of work” (Harari, 2018) the teaching profession remains a necessary one for society (people, in general), because, despite the fact that artificial intelligence will be used to replace people, some characteristics such as creativity or decision taking, human sensitivity cannot be modelated by robots or computers.