The profession of professional associate is of great importance in the field of education. Its tasks are numerous and include cooperation with all participants of the educational process to ensure the quality of teaching. Despite the fact that the school educator is the most widely profiled professional associate, it can be said that his role today is given more significance than throughout history, but work is still needed to recognize the professional identity of the educator. Modern society and rapid changes in the knowledge society and new technologies require new ways and methods of work of professional associates - school educators. They face major challenges and their key task is to improve the quality of the teaching process. Moving away from traditional to modern school and new areas of work require educators to have new specific competences, lifelong learning, professional development and continuous cooperation with all participants in education in order to successfully adapt and implement their role. The theoretical part of the paper states the modern roles of pedagogues and the necessary competencies to do the job, explains the importance of cooperation as well as the process of evaluation and self-evaluation in order to improve the quality of teaching. The aim of the research was to assess the attitudes of teachers and students of the Republic of Croatia on the importance of the role of pedagogues for improving the quality of teaching. 119 teachers and 105 students participated in the research. For the purposes of the research, two survey questionnaires were used, one for students and one for teachers. The results of the study showed that students and teachers have high expectations of educators and that they believe that they must possess a wide range of competencies to successfully perform various jobs and improve the quality of teaching.