University teachers are a core part of academic communities, responsible not only for transmitting disciplinary knowledge but also for supporting students’ broader development. Ongoing societal and institutional changes—internationalization, digitalization, and increasing attention to teaching and study quality—have intensified expectations regarding university teachers’ educational competence and its continuous development. In global and European policy contexts, educational competence is repeatedly positioned as a condition for quality higher education: international recommendations emphasise that academic teaching is a public responsibility requiring specific knowledge and skills, and that professional development should correspond to the demands placed on academic staff (UNESCO, 1997, 2016; IAU, 2012, 2024). In quality assurance discussions, the links between teaching, learning, governance, and educational quality are further stressed (INQUAAHE, 2018), while European frameworks consistently highlight the importance of teacher competences for programme design, student-centred learning, and assessment practices (ENQA, 2005; BFUG, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2018, 2022). At the same time, policy discourse often leaves the concrete mechanisms of competence development under-specified and unevenly implemented in practice (OECD, 2019, 2020, 2021).

This study takes these tensions as its starting point and focuses on educational competence development in early academic careers. Educational competence is conceptualized as a broad, multidimensional construct, encompassing pedagogical, teaching, and didactic dimensions and integrating knowledge, skills, and psychosocial factors (Jucevičienė & Stanikūnienė, 2003; Vitello, Greatorex, & Shaw, 2021). The study also addresses a persistent conceptual problem: the terminological ambiguity between competence/competency in English and in Lithuanian usage, and the resulting terminological uncertainty that complicates both research and institutional communication (Rychen & Tiana, 2004; Halasz & Michel, 2011; Antera, 2021). Prior research suggests that competence-related constructs are frequently operationalised through fragmented lists and instruments that capture discrete skills while neglecting competence as an integrated whole (Moreira et al., 2023; Eskolin et al., 2023; Melle & Ferreira, 2023). This is particularly problematic in higher education, where competence development must respond to rapidly changing teaching environments, including digitalisation and shifting teacher–student relations.

The objective of the study is to explore how university teachers with up to ten years of professional experience understand and narrate educational competence development, how they describe their perceived needs and development pathways, and how they relate these experiences to formal expectations and quality-oriented frameworks. The study is guided by two research questions: (1) How do early-career university teachers narratively construct and interpret their educational competence development (pedagogical, teaching, and didactic dimensions) during the first decade of academic work? (2) How do these narratives depict the relationship between lived competence development and formal requirements, including the challenges, tensions, and enabling or constraining conditions encountered in institutional contexts?

By focusing on early-career narratives, the study aims to contribute to debates on educational improvement and quality assurance by showing how competence development is experienced, negotiated, and emotionally and professionally lived, rather than only prescribed. It offers an empirical and conceptual bridge between policy-level competence discourse and the everyday realities through which university teachers become educationally competent professionals.

This study adopts a qualitative narrative research design to explore how early-career university teachers (with up to ten years of academic experience) construct, interpret, and reflect upon their educational competence development within the institutional context of higher education. Narrative inquiry is chosen because it allows for an in-depth exploration of lived professional experiences, capturing not only practices and actions but also meanings, tensions, and identity-related processes embedded in academic work (Riessman, 2007; Polkinghorne, 1988). Data will be generated through narrative interviews incorporating in-depth interview elements. The interviews are designed to encourage participants to recount their professional trajectories, focusing on key moments, challenges, and turning points related to teaching, pedagogical learning, and educational competence development. While participants are invited to freely narrate their experiences, the interviewer will use open-ended prompts to explore specific aspects relevant to the study, such as encounters with formal competence requirements, institutional expectations, self-directed learning, and perceived gaps between policy and practice. The study plans to involve a purposive sample of 8–10 university teachers, representing different disciplines and institutional contexts, all of whom are within the first decade of their academic careers. This career stage is considered critical for professional identity formation and competence development, as teachers navigate the transition from disciplinary expert to educator within higher education. Interviews will be audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using narrative analytical approaches. The analysis will primarily draw on thematic narrative analysis, focusing on recurring meanings and patterns across participants’ stories, while remaining attentive to narrative structure and context (Riessman, 2007). Elements of holistic and categorical reading will be applied to examine narratives both as coherent wholes and through analytically relevant segments (Lieblich et al., 1998). This combination allows for identifying shared experiences as well as individual variations in how educational competence is understood and enacted. Throughout the research process, reflexivity will be emphasized, acknowledging the researcher’s role in co-constructing narratives and interpreting meanings within specific academic and cultural contexts. Ethical considerations include informed consent, confidentiality, and careful handling of potentially sensitive professional experiences.

This study is expected to contribute to a deeper understanding of educational competence development as a lived and narrated process in early academic careers. Rather than treating educational competence as a predefined set of skills or measurable indicators, the findings are anticipated to reveal how university teachers construct meanings around teaching, learning, and professional growth through their personal and institutional experiences. The analysis is likely to show that early-career university teachers develop educational competence in fragmented, non-linear, and often informal ways, frequently relying on self-directed learning, peer support, and experiential reflection rather than structured institutional training. Narratives may highlight tensions between formal competence requirements expressed in policy documents and the practical realities of teaching, where competence is negotiated in situ, under time constraints and competing academic demands. The study is also expected to identify critical moments and turning points in teachers’ professional trajectories—such as first teaching experiences, student feedback, evaluation procedures, or encounters with institutional expectations—that shape how educational competence is understood and enacted. These moments are likely to be accompanied by emotional and identity-related dimensions, including uncertainty, self-doubt, growing confidence, or professional recognition, which are often absent from policy-oriented or survey-based research. From a theoretical perspective, the findings may support a holistic conceptualization of educational competence, integrating pedagogical, didactic, and teaching-related dimensions as interdependent rather than separate components. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the value of narrative inquiry for accessing dimensions of competence development that remain underexplored in dominant evaluative and quantitative approaches. Practically, the results may inform higher education institutions by offering empirically grounded insights into how early-career teachers experience competence development and what forms of support they find meaningful. This knowledge can contribute to designing more responsive professional development initiatives that align formal requirements with the lived realities of academic teaching.

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