An Entirely Different Reality: The Experience of 12 Newly Qualified Pedagogues on the Subject of Education and Work.

A study conducted qualitative interviews with 12 newly qualified pedagogues from 3 different training colleges in 3 different locations in Denmark. The project was launched because the formerly more specialized training program was being replaced by one standard education program that would be a general education in which students would gain a general knowledge of problems attached to pedagogical work with ordinary, disabled and socially disadvantaged children, juveniles and adults, and have the potential to learn to obtain new knowledge and options when confronted with new problems at work. The organization of the new training program was decentralized. The first point of general relevance from the study was that, if a national education board leaves it to the decentralized levels to determine essential elements of the training programs, it would result in differentiation. The second point was that as a result of modernizing, newly qualified pedagogues would need increased proficiency in negotiation and administration systems. The third point was that 11 pedagogues planned to create their own special niche or a special career by incorporating personal interests such as music. In connection with the "critical/utopian" concepts of self-regulation, self-determination, and self-administration, newly qualified pedagogues may interpret them very differently according to the cultural context of the pedagogue. (Contains 10 references.) (YLB)