Ilse Schrittesser University of Vienna 1 From Novice to Professional: Teachers for the 21 st century and how they learn their job. Ilse Schrittesser 1 How can teachers become professionals and what is essential in teacher education to prepare students for the challenges of the future? Some of the teachers we educate today might well be teaching into the 22nd century – how can teacher education take this fact into account? I will first throw a glance at the challenges ahead and, considering these, try to point out which consequences we should draw for the teaching profession. Second, I will deal with the concept of profession, what is meant by it in professionalism research, what the core tasks of a profession are, which competences professionals need to develop and what this means for the teaching profession. In a third step I will take a look at expertise research and what we can learn from the abundant studies on expert performance for the making of an expert teacher. Finally, I will try to summarize my ideas and draw a few conclusions on how to re-think teacher education against this background and which measures should be taken to make teacher education fit for the future. 1. The challenges ahead: which consequences should we draw for the teaching profession. What are the challenges ahead? Western societies are presently concerned with a number of challenges, among them sustainable economic growth for the well being of all members of society. They also have to come to terms with profound social changes and in order to deal with these changes have to support the advancement of active citizenship. Furthermore, people must learn to deal with cultural diversity and that it has to be seen as a resource and not as a problem. Schooling for all, and high-quality schooling could be one way of dealing with these issues. To impart key competences to our young seems to be an urgent matter. For all these claims and aspirations, lifelong learning, finally, is a concept we will have to integrate into our ways of life. All in all, we are experiencing a social and economic transformation, which in many cases it is not yet possible to grasp in all its dimensions. This is crucial for education and for education systems. How can we plan education programmes, how can we plan to develop schools, how can we design teacher education curricula for a yet unknown but not too distant future? The European Framework of Key Competences defines the threshold value for knowledge, skills and 1 Opening lecture held at the international symposium „Learning to be a Teacher in a Changing World“, University of Barcelona, Nov. 21st, 2013. http://som.esbrina.eu/aprender/index-en.html