The general ageing of population is reflected at schools similarly to the society as a whole. The average age of teachers is growing and young people do not find the teaching career attractive enough to pursue. This is leading to the situation where the schools may lack teachers in 10-15 years' time. The aim of the current study was to explore the 18-19-year-old students' perceptions and attitudes to the teaching profession in the case of Estonia. 275 students were questioned to explore the popularity of the teaching profession. The results revealed that although the students value teachers' job highly, they consider it a hard, underpaid and lowchallenging job.

In addition to content knowledge, it is necessary to teach learning skills. Using relevant learning skills assures better learning outcomes and abilities for the whole life course. Due to a packed curriculum or teachers having insufficient skills, student learning skills are often neglected. The aim of this study is to find out whether it is possible to support the development of declarative knowledge in learning skills in teachers through procedural knowledge acquired via practical teaching activities. A quasi-experimental study using semi-structured pre- and post-intervention interviews and six-month intervention activities was conducted with 14 teachers. The procedural knowledge of the teachers was assessed based on their practical experience with the intervention activities. Their declarative knowledge was assessed based on pre- and post-intervention interview reflections. The findings revealed that procedural knowledge, being predominantly teacher centred, mostly appears through experience and reflections on the teaching practice that guides them. It also appeared that the intervention focusing on advancing procedural knowledge among teachers advanced their declarative knowledge in terms of metacognition, revealing new aspects of motivation and sense-giving for their learning. As follow-up research, we plan to continue studying conditional knowledge in teachers in order to identify situations where this is applied.

Research conducted on the popularity of teaching profession with school-leavers has indicated on low popularity and young people's little interest in the profession. This may have several reasons but one of the most dominating indicators is the impression teachers themselves make of their work. The current study was triggered by the results of a preceding study, which explored final-year students' perceptions and attitudes towards teaching profession. This paper explores how teachers perceive their profession and which image and attitude they forward to their students. 226 primary and secondary teachers were questioned. Their answers were compared to their students' answers collected a year before. The results revealed that teachers perceive the reputation of the teaching profession in society as being low. Even though most of them love their job, they would not encourage young people to pursue a career in teaching, mostly because of the low salaries and low reputation. Despite the teachers' perception of their job having low reputation, several steps have been taken statewise to recognise their good work.