Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Larry Holt. Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-172).

The most of it comes with experience, or? The Teacher Education Program for upper secondary school’s ability to prepare new (civics)teachers for their professional life. This study focuses on newly graduated civics teachers’ experiences of their teacher education inrelation to what they deem necessary to know in their current work as a teacher. The study aims tolearn more about in what extent the teacher education program can and should prepare teachers fortheir professional life, compared to what they learn while working as a teacher. More specifically,the aim is to study the subject studies and the didactics in civics at the teacher education program.The findings of this work are based on semi-structured interviews with ten teachers who teach civicsat upper secondary school level. The teachers also participated in a small digital survey and thoseresults are also included in this work. All the teachers graduated from Umeå university’s teachereducation program between 2019-2021. A Qualitative Data Analysis called The ConstantComparative Method has been used to systematically find patterns in the material. The study shows that teachers overall have different views on what is possible tolearn at a teacher education program, compared to what they must learn while working aftergraduation. Three different groups of teachers are identified. Firstly, a group of five teachers reckonthat the main purpose of the teacher education program should be to give the future teacher “a basis”- the rest “comes with experience”. It should thus primarily focus on subject studies. Secondly, twoteachers do not think that the teacher education program is necessary at all. They prefer to learn asthey go while working. Lastly, a third group of teachers argue that the teacher education programshould be more “teacher-specific” and thus include far more didactics. The teachers are providing many suggestions on what they think should be added tothe teacher education program. Looking at the subject studies, they first and foremost miss sometopics that they think the teacher education program can and should contain. For instance, sevenout of ten teachers want the subject studies to talk more about Media, since it is something that theteachers need to teach about according to the steering documents. Moreover, all teachers agree thatthey should be taught on how to talk about topics in the classroom that are considered sensitive orprivate for the students. In addition, the teachers want more didactics during their studies at theteacher education program. Above all, they would prefer to know more about didactic methods, andthey want to have the chance to create materials which could be in use after graduation.

This study focuses on civics teachers’ opinions and experiences of subject-integratedteaching. The study aims to learn more about teachers’ autonomy and how it affects theirchoice to teach subject-integrated or not. More specifically, the study is concerned withteachers’ way of interpreting the national steering documents and how it affects their choiceof methods, but also which aspects, circumstances, and conditions – in this study calledframework factors - teachers find as either opportunities or obstacles for subject-integration.The findings of this work are based on interviews with five teachers who teach civics at thesame upper secondary school in the north of Sweden.The study shows that teachers have different interpretations of the national steeringdocuments, which results in how and to what extent subject-integration is conducted varies.At the same time subject-integrated teaching seems to be regarded as a teaching methodwhere a lot of planning and preparatory work is required. Moreover, teachers emphasize that astrong consensus between the teachers is necessary for cooperation to function well. Inaddition, teachers must be willing to relinquish some of their autonomy when workingsubject-integrated, which many of them think is a problem. Teachers want a large amount ofautonomy and they do not want anything or anyone to limit it. They want to choose thecontent and methods that they think fit best and at the same time they want to be able toredirect their teaching based on what is happening in the world. All these reasons combinedresult in teachers not teaching subject-integrated to a particularly large extent.