Abstract
Th e aim of the paper is to present how the novice teachers who were followed perceive the impact of undergraduate training on their fi rst years of practice and what can be seen in this way to improve the quality of training of future teachers. Methods: Th e research sample consists of thirteen novice biology teachers with experience ranging from one to fi ve years.
Th e data was obtained through in-depth semi-structured interviews and was analysed by grounded theory. Th e results show that the component of vocational biological training was the one which was evaluated most highly, with the pedagogical-psychological component before the (subject-related) didactic component causing the greatest reservations.
As part of the pedagogical-psychological and didactic component of undergraduate training, the teachers suggested increasing the amount of classroom observation, the application of experiential teaching, or the mediation of teaching by university educators or experts with real work experience in school practice. Th e assessment of their undergraduate training was infl uenced by the shock of the reality of school, caused by the unrealistic expectations of novice teachers.
Conclusions: We consider the contribution of this study to be that despite a certain individuality of views, some trends have been observed that could be taken into account in the preparation of future teacher education programmes, and that we have managed to uncover the key links between the diff erent components of undergraduate training, which was visualized by means of an abstract scheme in the form of a tetrahedron.