Be a teacher today. What do the teachers think of their abilities?

In the society of knowledge and in the age of the globalization the changes occur due to a vertiginous rhythm, dictating new needs in the most diverse areas. In the educational field, the teachers who, in the earlier times, had the main role of teaching, now are faced with new roles. In view of this challenge, the role of the teacher, as well as the essential abilities to the performance of the teaching activity, in a complex society, heterogeneous and floating in values, of the 21st Century, has constituted the thematic of a scientific study. Through a qualitative as well as quantitative study, based in the testimony of teachers of 3º cycle of the basic and the secondary education of schools of municipality of Almada, collected by means of inquiries, and based over all on the theoretical referential of Philippe Perrenoud, we identified the abilities that the group of professors find essential to its current role and analyzed which of them practice the same in their professions of education. The results of this study had evidenced that the teachers prefer the competences related to the pedagogical domain, such as: “To involve the students in the Learning Task and in the School Work”, “To organize and To direct Situations of Learning” and “To manage the Progression of the Learnings”. On the other hand, it was confirmed the harmony between the abilities that in theory the teachers prefer as essential to their current role and the abilities that assume in practice as teachers.