Abstract. What can teacher educators learn from genuine artists and craftsmen? - Teacher education institutions are today challenged by the question of making their objectives explicit; what aims should teacher education serve? One approach to the question is to select and define elements of mastery within the profession, and correspondingly; key-competences that teacher education should aim at developing. These competences may point at autonomy in certain performative fields, abilities of communication and of interaction and operational skills. Seeing teaching as a performing art, they may also include intuitive capacities. As a contrast, one may approach the question of what teacher education should serve, by pointing at the self-education or ‘Bildung aspect’ of adult education: Teacher education should serve the development of the adult learner; the unfolding of his or her genuine personality. Are the approaches conflicting or could they be approached to complement and subserve each other? How should we conceive the training of competences in teacher education within a process of self-education, and vice versa, what would a qualification framework look like aimed at the cultivation of self through vocation? This article discusses the symmetry of these two approaches and the conditions for uniting them in an applicable qualification framework.
