In the last decade, there is an increasing discussion on teaching quality and teachers’ professional competence (e.g., Cochran-Smith M, Teach Teach Educ 17:527–546, 2001). International comparative studies such as the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) and the Mathematics Teaching in the twenty-first century study (MT21) reveal that German preservice and in-service teachers lack central competence facets (e.g., content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge; cf. Blömeke S, Felbrich A, Müller C, Erziehungswissenschaftliches Wissen am Ende der Lehrerausbildung. In: Blömeke S, Kaiser G, Lehmann R (eds) Professionelle Kompetenz angehender Lehrerinnen und Lehrer. Wissen, Überzeugungen und Lerngelegenheiten deutscher Mathematik-Studierender und -Referendare – erste Ergebnisse zur Wirksamkeit der Lehrerausbildung. Waxmann, Münster, pp 195–217, 2008, Blömeke S, Kaiser G, Lehmann R (eds) Professionelle Kompetenz angehender Lehrerinnen und Lehrer – Wissen, Überzeugungen und Lerngelegenheiten deutscher Mathematikstudierender und -referendare. Erste Ergebnisse zur Wirksamkeit der Lehrerbildung. Münster (et al.), Waxmann, Münster, 2010). These findings suggest that teacher education programs fail to successfully prepare student teachers for their tasks. A central problem is that – even if there is an increasing amount of studies on preservice teachers’ competence – research on vocational teachers’ competence in the domain of business and economic education is so far scarce. So the key issue of this chapter is to provide an overview of research activities in this field of interest. To do so, the chapter will start from a broad perspective with a look back on the origins of competence-based teacher education (CBTE). The focus will be on competence definitions, modeling, and measurement in teacher education. Approaches will be presented and discussed critically (Sect. 41.2). It must be stated that the early approaches were not successful because of a lack of conceptual clarity and precision as well as a weakness of the empirical foundation (for a critical assessment of CBTE initiatives, see Mulder M, Weigel T, Collins K, J Vocat Educ Train 591:65–85, 2007). In Sect. 41.3 we will discuss recent initiatives of modeling and measuring teacher competence, putting the focus on central competence facets and corresponding measurement models. Current competence modeling approaches mainly draw on eclectic competence models. In this sense, professional teacher competence is seen as a composition of professional knowledge (mainly content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge) as well as beliefs, motivational orientation, and self-regulation. Critical points concerning the earlier approaches of CBTE are taken up in this chapter, too. Furthermore, we will emphasize in what aspects recent approaches can be seen as an improvement. In Sect. 41.4, we will elaborate on an example of current CBTE in business and economic education and discuss examples of modeling and measuring preservice and in-service teachers’ competence. In this section, some findings from different studies will be reported. They show that preservice teachers lack several competence facets, especially content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion and an outlook for the future. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017.
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