Professional Competencies of Foreign Language Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Schools

The process of globalization and the development of a knowledge-based society has greatly influenced all spheres of social life, especially in the area of education that has a primary task, which is to enable an individual to live and work under these new conditions. This also requires new competencies and new, demanding tasks are being set before teachers on a daily basis, which is expanding their freedom of actions. They are required to improve the quality of the teaching process constantly by introducing various innovations in teaching and to undergo continuous professional development that needs to be a dynamic and durable process. In this respect, foreign language teachers have a particularly important role in trends related to the improvement of the quality of education and teaching.. Through their work, they create a teaching environment that supports the development of competencies necessary for life and work in the 21st century. There is no doubt that the need for continuous professional training of all those involved in the educational process is a necessity and obligation. So, this topic is certainly up-to-date and so far not many studies have been carried out about it, especially in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton elementary and secondary schools. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to clearly highlight the professional competence and professional development of foreign language teachers, their attitudes and assessments related to the possibilities for continuous professional development and adopting new learning strategies. The main aim of the research was to gain insight into the attitudes of foreign language teachers towards the importance of continuous professional development and its impact on improving professional competencies. 1 The research was conducted in elementary and secondary schools in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on a sample of 91 foreign language teachers (English, 1 In effect, competence and competency (from Latin competentia which meant an agreement, a conjunction, and possibly expertise) are interchangeable, though competence is more often used to describe a person's general ability, while competency is more often used to describe a person's ability to perform a certain task (https://grammarist.com/