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One of the demands of our educational system is the orientantion towards sustenability. To prepare people for future we need teachers who are able to develop the 21stcentury competences – the six macro-level competences are considered universally relevant: life-long learning, multi-literatenes, trans-disciplinarity, self-agency, interacting with others and interacting in and with the world. (Marope, 2018). This article focuses on researching the way in which pedagogical practices are changed and on studying the factors which are involved in educational changes. A longitudinaly study on ten years (2008-2018) was set up. Our purpose was to look for and describe how the educational practice has changed. The changes in educational practices are produced when they are sustained by educational politics and environmental factors as well as the teacher`s abilities and traits: reflections, novelty, openness, learning, critical thinking. The gap between present educational practice and future demands can be reduced if system teacher training is rethought according to 21stcentury competences. Transformative learning in teacher training is an adequate way of developing teacher`s competences.

Critical thinking tends to be seen more than a competence for adaptation. It is one of the most important meta-competences for future society. This study addresses two research questions: What kind of educational strategies are necessary for developing critical thinking skills? How can teachers develop students' critical thinking competences? The goal of this study: to identify the adequate strategy for developing critical thinking as a 21st century competence. This study involved a longitudinal research for a period of five years (2014-2019) and included 300 participants (students and teachers). For developing critical thinking as a meta-competence all teachers have to use the transformative pedagogical strategy in their daily practice.

For many students and teachers the Covid-19 pandemic was a transformative learning experience. They were forced to cope with many changes at different levels of life: personal, professional, social. For many, the soft skills such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, time management, being present, being empathetic or self-regulation were the main resource for effective adaptation. This is the reason why we need to adopt a new education vision, focused on developing soft skills for teachers and students, and finally for society. The aim of the present research was to analyse the respondents' perception of the soft skills which help them cope with the Covid-19 pandemic period. A questionnaire regarding teachers' skills was used. The research sample consists of 359 respondents. An important conclusion of the study was that the respondents' resilience was determined by the change in the perspective on the problems that arose during the pandemic.