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The present study investigates how teacher candidates in social studies describe their perceived self-efficacy to teach the subject of economics at Secondary School level. The study also explores what economic concepts the teacher candidates perceived as particularly significant during their university education and intend to teach to future students. To address the study's purpose and research questions, Bandura's (1997) theoretical concept of perceived self-efficacy and Meyer & Land's (2003) term threshold concepts serve as the theoretical framework. In total, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with different teacher candidates, all of whom participated in the teacher education course in economics worth 15 credits at Linnaeus University in Växjö. Their statements were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The main conclusions of the study are that half of the teacher candidates described a low perceived self-efficacy to teach economics, while the other half described a high perceived self-efficacy. The differences can primarily be explained by whether the teacher candidates had taught economics during their internship (VFU) or not. The high proportion of teacher candidates with low perceived self-efficacy aligns with previous research findings and poses a risk of this knowledge area being neglected in future teaching careers. Regarding economic concepts, the concepts of supply and demand, inflation, GDP, and the economic cycle emerge as particularly significant for the teacher candidates. The results also indicate that teacher candidates perceive economics as concept-heavy and abstract. The uncertainty among teacher candidates regarding the subject of economics can be seen as a democratic problem, and increasing confidence requires further research in this area. |
