Teacher training in the 21st century is a challenge of our days as a result of the volatility of new challenges and development that is experienced in the scientific and technological world.
The formation and training of new knowledge and adaptation to technology is a strategic way that the teacher of the XXI century must assume as a praxiological and useful tool to assume the changes and transformations that are experienced in this educational sector.
The university teaching task in the 21st century is so complex that it requires the teacher to master pedagogical strategies that facilitate their didactic performance. Therefore, the process of learning to teach is necessary to better understand teaching and to enjoy it (Ramsden, 1992).
From there emerges the importance of highlighting that the training of the university teacher is a skill that must contain a hermeneutic character, human among others, because the compression of being in its essence is very complex and full of uncertainty, the mere fact that each being possesses a human dimension characterized by its axiological axes makes it dynamic and unintelligible.
Within the framework of our holistic analysis, it is important to highlight that the general dynamics of change in our society creates imbalances, raises new demands in the training of professional, psychological and specialized skills for teachers seeking to start or position themselves in the Venezuelan educational labor market.
Although the educational system is not exclusively responsible for the training of teachers, it plays an important and driving role within this entire socialized process of knowledge.
In this sense, it is important that teachers who work in higher-level educational institutions in the XXI century, make a judicious reflection on whether their capacities may or may not respond to the expectations of the demands of a heterogeneous and critical sector that requires of answers to describe and explain the complexity of this new society where the constant is change.
Faced with this reality, a new reconfiguration of the role of the university teacher is necessary, its new contextualization must emerge from a new philosophical vision and in turn must be articulated with the progress of students, whose competencies, knowledge and skills not only make it possible to improve the competitive advantages in the world economy, but also to the commitment to social relevance, that is, to find alternative solutions to social problems in the national and local environments where it coexists, in the ability to solve unforeseen problems that arise in work practice, in order to improve the quality of life of the population, promote the socio-cultural development of man.
In this sense, Tedesco states that: “All teacher training programs, whether initial or permanent, try to introduce changes in their attitudes and values, predispositions and expectations in order to change the way of doing things in the classroom and in this way, change the structuring principles of the trade ”(1998).
On the other hand, the session of the International Conference on Education (1998), about the role of teachers in a world in process of change. They express the orientations and problems that should be solved as well as what would be the requirements that society in the coming decades will make in the education sector, which give a complete vision of the systemic approach on the teaching problem as a whole:
1. Recruitment of teachers: attracting more competent young people to practice the teaching profession.
2. Initial training: improve the articulation of initial training with the demands of an innovative, creative and productive professional activity.
3. In-service training: belonged to the institution.
4. Participation of teachers and other agents in the educational transformation process: autonomy and responsibility.
5. Teachers and other social actors associated with the educational process: education is everyone's responsibility.
6. The new information and communication technologies at the service of improving personnel and the quality of education.
7. The promotion of professionalism as a strategy to improve the employment situation of teachers.
8. Promote synergy and empathy among teachers.
9. Collaboration of regional and international entities as an instrument to promote the mobility and competence of teachers in the face of the challenges of the 21st century.
The importance of all these elements mentioned above, in our way of understanding, pose the need for a new educational dynamic in the university culture, a culture of quality and evaluation, a culture of relevance, a computer culture, a culture of effective strategic management and a culture of commitment to the country.
The university professor for the 21st century, as Colombian professor Álvaro Recio underlines, will be a pedagogue-researcher with a deep human and social training, so that he or she becomes an agent of change for himself, his students and the surrounding community. where the teaching will also be oriented to the student learning to work, to investigate, to invent, to create and not to continue memorizing theories and facts.
This situation implies challenges for the educator, first of all, having to find himself, and the need to possess theoretical, conceptual and methodological tools that allow him to know in depth the environment and his students. In addition, he must master the field of specific knowledge to carry out his profession as an educator and have elements that allow him to deepen them, apply them and be constantly updated.
It is important to note that the university also plays a preponderant role in this entire process of complexity, as noted by Philip G Altbach, The institution and its leaders are at the center of the knowledge society, of course it is the most important institution within the complex knowledge creation and distribution process.
All the aforementioned implies the need for a profound renovation of the
academic mental structures, of the administrative organization and of the teaching methods. The change in teaching methods is a requirement imposed by the very nature of contemporary knowledge, whose exponential growth, multidisciplinary and internationalization, is concomitant of its rapid obsolescence.
