ISSN 2601-8616 (print) ISSN 2601-8624 (online) European Journal of Education May August 2019 Volume 2, Issue 2 15 Competency Profile of the Teaching Profession in Croatia After Initial Education Lorena Lazarić Dr. Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Croatia Snježana Močinić Assist. Prof. Dr. Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Croatia Ivana Paula Gortan-Carlin Assist. Prof. Dr. Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Croatia Abstract The teachers’ competence profile is in a constant discrepancy due to demands posed by life in the contemporary world of change. The base for the development of teachers’ professional competences is set during initial education, although professional qualifications continue to be developed further through internship, teaching practice and lifelong professional training. Teachers’ competences have to be expanded from traditional to new ones, such as the skill to diagnose pupils’ needs for learning, the ability to methodically designate the environment for active learning and the development of competences, the ability of critical deliberation about achieved work results and individual research with the aim to implement innovations in teaching, develop collaboration and organization skills and other competences necessary to the teacher who searches for his or her way, and is not only the realiser of other people’s ideas.This paper presents the results obtained by comparing teachers’ competences quoted in some teacher study curricula in Croatia (Universities of Pula, Rijeka and Zadar) as to determine if the description of competences implies a teacher who is the leader and animator of the learning process, the one ready for reflection and research, or it indicates a teacher who is the technical realiser of the curriculum. Keywords: Competence Profile, Professional Competences, Teacher, Animator, Researcher Introduction In the period between the 60s and 90s of the 20 th century the notion of competency gradually passes from economics to pedagogic terminology, often replacing the meaning of one or more of the following terms: knowledge, ability, skill, art, attitudes and values, at the same time creating chaos of different definitions and interpretations (Perini, Puricelli, 2013: 14- 15). Between the years 2000 and 2010 the competency approach becomes the base of the overall design of the European educational policy and slowly enters the Croatian educational policy and school practice. It is an extremely complex, controversial and ambiguous notion which has lately been preoccupying Croatian pedagogues, but does still not have a unique pedagogic interpretation or is recognised in the area of pedagogy (Palekčić, 2007: 146; Strugar, 2012: 38-40). Among the important domestic documents on education, the ones based on the concept of competences are The Croatian Framework of Qualifications (2009) (abbreviated as CFQ) and The National Curriculum Framework for Preschool Education, General Compulsory and Secondary Education (2014) (abbreviated as NCF). The former document, CFQ, recognises the following definition of competences: a set of knowledge and skills, as well as autonomy and responsibility, with an explanation that competences relate to all that can be acquired by learning. The CFQ differentiates factual (information) and theoretical (links of information) knowledge, as well as cognitive, psychomotor (practical) and social skills. The latter, NCF, does not give an expressed definition of competence, but it can be read between the lines that the term used implies knowledge, skills, abilities, values and attitudes. Numerous Croatian pedagogues have dealt with competences in their theoretical deliberations and empirical research, some of them being: Mijatović, 2002; Vizek Vidović, 2005; Domović, 2006, 2009, Hrvatić, Piršl, 2007; Peko et al., 2007;