The educational competence of a higher education institution teacher is defined as the teacher's knowledge, abilities, and skills; his experince in the activitiesas a student, personal qualities, and attitudes and values, corresponding to the learning paradigm that determine successful support of the teacher to the student. Educational competence can be understood as the ability to employ personal qualities, subject knowledge, and pedagogical skills to meet the student's academic needs and create an effective learning environment.

The teachers' educational activities in the learning environment of the specialized university are distinguished by the fact that the majority of the teachers have no education of a traditional teacher. Thus, great significance falls on learning from experience in acquiring educational competence and creating a learning environment based on parity relationship between teachers and students. The problem is also the fact that without proper assessment of the importance of educational competence, and just with the focus mainly on the development of subject knowledge and expertise, there are difficulties in meeting the academic needs of the students. According to the research of the Lithuanian scientists, such as Jucevičienė, et al. (2010); Virgailaitė - Mečkauskaitė (2012); Gudaitytė, Butrimė , et al. (2013); Gudaitytė, Alešiūnaitė, et al. (2014); Artimova, Butrimė , et al. (2016), these teachers, especially those working with the students from different cultures, lack pedagogical (consisting of the knowledge of didactics, psychology, and education management) and communicative competence, covering communication, team work skills, foreign language knowledge and information skills, so they are looking for a variety of ways to gain this competence.

The article aims at giving the answer to the question of how the university teachers, working with the students of different cultures, assess the possibilities of educational competence expression in the learning environment of a specialized university. How their assessment differs from the assessment of teachers who work with the Lithuanian students. Efforts are being made to answer the questions through the research participants, i. e. the teachers of a specialized Lithuanian university.

The research participants have been asked to evaluate the statements reflecting the three parts of the educational competence: pedagogical, communicative, and organizational. The aim is to determine the teachers approach to the possibilities of the educational competence expression, to compare and distinguish the peculiarities of the attitudes of the teachers working with the students of different cultures.

 Although, in Lithuania, there is no system of the teacher qualification development; however,  individual universities, including our own, have their own faculty competence development centers. Therefore, the respondents of this research were also asked how they would like to improve their educational competence, and what method of development from the proposed "menu" they would select or what proposals they would have.

The article is based on the theoretical positions that highlight constructivist provisions, favourable educational environments for student empowerment, assumptions of the origin of deep learning, the specificity of contemporary learning and higher education (Barnett, 1990, 1999; Jucevičienė, Gudaitytė et al., 2010; Jucevičienė, Lipinskienė, 2001; Jucevičienė , Stanikūnienė, 2002; Petty, 2006, 2008; Ramsden, 2000).

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