According to The American Commission on Teacher Education, “The quality of a nation depends upon the quality of its citizens. The quality of its citizens depends not exclusively, but in critical measure upon the quality of their education, the quality of their education depends more upon any single factor, upon the quality of their teacher”.

Teachers are perhaps the most critical component of any system of education. How well they teach depends on motivation, qualification, experience, training, aptitude and a mass of other factors, not the least of these being the environment and management structures with in which they perform their role. Teachers must be seen as part of the solution, not part of the problem. Teaching involves a combination of roles as an individual and a team player, leading to professional development and potential efficiency respectively, choosing their own pedagogy (Clement and Vandenbergha, 2000). There are number of factors that influence competency development that can be domestic (internal) and non-domestic (external) factors. Internal factors like lack of support from family, health issues etc. and external factors like lack of support from staff at all levels has an effect on teacher’s performance.

Competency at the individual level defined by Peter Drucker in 1985 is “the ability of an employee to offer superior performance in assigned tasks”. According to Zarifan, (1999), a competency is defined as “the practical intelligence about work situations that is supported by acquired knowledge that transforms an individual”. Competency is “the set of social and communicational learning processes nurtured upstream by education and downstream by education system (La Boterf, 1995). The framework of teacher competency spanned field and research competencies, curriculum conceptualization, lifelong learning, emotional and environmental competencies that affect their values, behavior and communication besides their professional development and curricular studies (Kiymet Salvi, 2000). The readiness to learn, designing effective learning opportunities and providing appropriate support and challenge for teachers, were the insights sourced from Helmi’s Model of racial identity          (Gretchen McAllister, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, 2000).

KEYWORDS: Teachers, teaching attitudes, environmental competencies, Teaching Competency