Abstract:

Social competencies are based on the flexibility of an individual’s behaviour to achieve effective social interaction. It is said that the social competencies of an individual's knowledge, skills and abilities are to effectively adapt their own behaviour to the available information from the environment. Social competences are most often viewed from two perspectives - the perspective of adulthood education and the perspective of civic education (Dam and Volman, 2007), and each emphasizes different aspects of social competences that need to be developed in children to develop into complete and competent personalities.

Teachers spend most of their time interacting with children, their parents and other school staff, and the ability to adapt their own behaviour is a key element of their professional success. The responsibility for the development of social competencies lies with the institutions that make selections and train future teachers for work.

The aim of the research was to adjust and confirm the constructed scale of social competencies. In constructing the scale, 10 dimensions of competencies were used, measured using the FIBEL questionnaire by P. Kanning and C. Herrmann (2012), which include organizational skills, complexity of perception, ability to work under pressure, motivation for innovation, self-expression, self-confidence, assertiveness, willingness to cooperate, prosocial, and willingness to educate (Kanning and Herrmann, 2012). The scale is supplemented with particles that measure intercultural awareness and civic initiative, in order to cover both perspectives on social competencies and thus complete the picture of students ', future teachers', attitudes about their own social competencies.

The tasks of the research were to determine the measured characteristics of the scale and to determine the attitudes of students towards their own social competencies. The research was conducted using a questionnaire that included questions on the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, a question on knowledge of foreign languages and a translated and adjusted scale of social competencies. The sample consists of (N = 121) students of the Integrated Undergraduate and Graduate Teacher Education at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Rijeka, Croatia.

The adjusted scale resulted in appropriate measurement characteristics, and the results of the factor analysis conducted on the entire questionnaire showed the profiling of five scale factors. Students' attitudes towards their own social competencies are high on almost all items of the scale.

Examining the self-assessment of competencies, especially of students as future teachers, presents one of the key predictors of their initial education and future practice in schools. However, future research should include the remaining aspects of social competences that include social knowledge and skills.

Keywords:

Attitudes, scale of social competencies, teachers, students.