The importance of acquiring pedagogical and didactic competencies of future teachers – the Croatian context

This paper emphasizes the importance of developing pedagogical and didactic competencies of graduate students of teachers’ education, and certain problems they encountered in acquiring those competencies in the Croatian environment. The goal of the research was to examine the students’ (future teachers') assessments of the capability to work with children and their parents, assessment of possessing pedagogical–didactic competencies acquired in school, but also to emphasize the possibility of cooperation between teacher training institutions with institutions, and organizations engaged in informal forms of education. During research, the triangulation was used to approach the issue as objectively as possible. The survey, interviews of future teachers (N = 70) who volunteer teaching children (6–10 years), and analysed of lesson plans analyses (N = 180) which students and volunteers used as templates for teaching were used. Results showed that students have not sufficiently developed pedagogical–didactic competencies which, among others, resulted in fear of “entering” the classroom and insufficient willingness to work with special needs students.